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But she might have saved her breath, for the black bundle behind the tree suddenly left cover and stood with hands folded, looking at the seated man. He drew his watch from his pocket and held it up. It approached. He whistled, and it approached nearer. Two yards away it stopped dead. "Tick-tick," said Adams, holding up the watch. "Papeete N'quong," replied the other, or words to that effect.
But I desired to carry with me a type-writer, and mine was out of order. There was no tinker of skill in Papeete, and I had about given up hope of repairs, when Lovaina said: "May be that eye doctor do you. He married one of those girl whose father before ran away with that English ship and Tahiti girls to Pitcairn Island, and get los' there till all chil'ren grow up big.
It was twenty miles from Papeete to Atimaono, and over half the distance was covered by the time the Chinago again ventured into speech. "I saw you in the court room, when the honourable judge sought after our guilt," he began. "Very good. And do you remember that Ah Chow, whose head is to be cut off do you remember that he Ah Chow was a tall man? Look at me."
The Christchurch Kid thought a moment, and conferred with the announcer, who talked with all the seconds. The spectators were insistent, and though loath to end the show, the Kid held up the gloved hand of the Mataiean. The announcer declared him the "champignon" of Papeete, but naïvely declared that Opeta was still full of fight, and challenged the universe.
From the sea, the village of Papeete, the capital and port, was all but hidden in the wood of many kinds of trees that lies between the beach and the hills. Red and gray roofs appeared among the mass of growing things at almost the same height, for the capital rested on only a narrow shelf of rising land, and the mountains descended from the sky to the very water's-edge.
The French Governor of the Paumotus was there, gaily bantering half a dozen girls for whom he bought drinks. We joined him with Miri and Caroline and Maraa and others, the best-known sirens of Papeete. They were handsome, though savage-looking, and they had lost their soft voices. Alcohol and a thousand upaupahuras had made them shrill. They smoked endless cigarettes.
The French, who have domination in these waters of a hundred islands and atolls between 8º and 27º south latitude, and between 137º and 154º west longitude, a stretch of about twelve hundred miles each way, make them all tributary to Papeete; and thus it is the metropolis of a province of salt water, over which come its couriers and its freighters, its governors and its soldiers, its pleasure-seekers and its idlers.
Among these were the Goeben, Breslau, Emden, Karlsruhe, and Leipzig, which captured or sank a number of vessels of the enemy. The German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau also operated in the Pacific, bombarding the French colony of Papeete, on the island of Tahiti, and inflicting much damage, including the sinking of two vessels.
In the far recesses of those mountains were almost inaccessible caves in which the natives laid their dead, and where one found still their moldering skeletons. M. Brault touched my shoulder. "Rumor has it that the body of Pomaré the Fifth is there," he said; "that it was taken secretly from the tomb you have seen near Papeete, and carried here at night.
Taata Mata, the name of a charming Tahitian woman I knew, signifies "Man's Eye," her own large eyes, perhaps, explaining the name, and Mauu, the name borne by a Tahitian man of good family in Papeete, "Moist." In all Polynesia one found picture names for people, as among the American Indians, and as among all nations, though with Europeans the meanings are forgotten.
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