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It was a far flight for fancy to take, from my paepae in the jungle at the foot of Temetiu, but looking at the beauty and grace of Malicious Gossip as she sat on my mats in her crimson pareu, I liked to think that it was so. "We are cousins," I said to her, handing her a freshly-opened cocoanut which Exploding Eggs brought.
Her nudity was a custom only at this time, for when she reappeared to aid Exploding Eggs in preparing my breakfast she always wore a scarlet pareu and her hair was done like Bernhardt's. Vanquished Often appeared with her aunt, carefully dressed in spotless, diaphanous tunic, fresh flowers in her hair, a treasured pink silk garter clasping her rounded arm.
We found a pool famed in the legends of the natives. In the olden days the kings and chiefs would have made it tabu to themselves. Landers had on a pareu only, his two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle a refreshing sight, and his eyes as bright as if he had had the prescribed eight hours.
But it was no place in which to linger on a tropic day. Taaoa Valley was narrow and deep, buried in perpetual gloom by the shadows of the mountains. Perhaps thirty houses lined the banks of a swift and rocky torrent. As we approached them we were met by a sturdy Taaoan, bare save for the pareu and handsomely tattooed.
She looked through the room to where I sat in the semi-obscurity, and then knelt down by the first bed, and waited. I gazed again at the starry heavens, and, stepping over the threshold, entered the chamber, lamp in hand. I undressed leisurely, and putting about me the pareu Lovaina had given me, I threw the light upon the two beds to make my nightly choice.
He was burdened with more than a hundred pounds of fruit, which he carried balanced on a pole over his shoulder, and with this he was to go seven or eight miles from their place of growth. He was a pillar of strength, handsome, glowing with effort, clad in a gorgeous pareu of red, and as we went by him, he smiled and said, "Ia ora na! I hea! Vaimato?" Greeting! Where have you been? The waterfall?"
She retired behind a bird's-nest fern, on the long, lanceolate leaves of which were the shells of the mountain snail. At her feet was the bastard canna, the pungent root of which makes Chinese curry. When she emerged, she was an amazing and enchanting personage. She had removed her gown, and wore a pareu of muslin, with huge scarlet leaves upon white.
The horse, the usual small, tough mountain-pony, was caught, and upon him we strapped the saddle with cow-skin stirrups, hairy and big, and a rope bridle. Orivie, handsomely dressed in wrinkled denim trousers, a yellow pareu and an aged straw hat, mounted the beast, and bidding farewell to the friends I had made, we began to climb the trail through the village.
The lagoon between the reef and the beach was turning from dark blue to azure pink. The miracle of the advent of the day was never more delicately painted before my eyes. In my crimson pareu I descended the grand staircase, which had often echoed to the booted tread of admiral and sailor, of diplomat and bureaucrat, and outside the building I passed along the lower rear balcony to the bath.
I slept without clothing, and in a bound was at the door, with my pareu about me. Already the family had begun the leisurely tasks of the day. The fowls were on the sward under the breadfruit and papaya-trees, and the mina-birds were swooping down on the grass near them to profit by their uncovering of food.
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