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Updated: May 17, 2025
Tatini had pointed out to me, when we walked the peninsula of Taravao, a projecting rock, marked with deep-worn grooves, from which the Tahitians once flew very large kites. These were tied to the rocks, and the ropes of cocoanut sennit in the course of hundreds of years had worn the stones away.
She drummed with her hand and waited, while Binu Charley gazed wearily at her with unblinking eyes. "I'll start the first thing in the morning," Sheldon said. "We'll start," she corrected. "I can get twice as much out of my Tahitians as you can, and, besides, one white should never be alone under such circumstances."
Suddenly fifty naked, dripping savages sprang upon the deck, and ere the sentries could do more than fire their muskets the work of slaughter had begun. Nearly all the white seamen, and many of the Tahitians, were lying upon the main hatch, and these were slain almost ere they had time to awake and realise their dreadful fate.
The puny fortifications erected by the French in the war with the Tahitians decades ago were of coral stones, and are now black with age and weather. I headed my canoe toward the barrier reef, and tied it to a knob of coral. Then I stepped out upon the reef itself, my tennis shoes keeping the sharp edges from cutting my feet.
She maintained this belligerent attitude for several days, during which time a series of informal negotiations were pending, and wide alarm spread over the island. Many of the Tahitians were at first disposed to resort to arms, and drive the invaders from their shores; but more pacific and feebler counsels ultimately prevailed.
The gleam of the torches, the blackness all about, the masterful figures of the Tahitians, the cries of warning, the laughter, the shouts of triumph, and the melancholy himenes, the softness and warmth of the water, the uncanny feel of living things about one's feet and body, the imaginative shudder of fear at shark or octopus or other terrible brute of the sea, the singing journey home in the canoes, and the joyous landing and counting of the catch all these were things never to be forgotten, pictures to be unveiled in drabber scenes or on white nights of sleeplessness.
The Tahitians were ever thus, and the French have not sought to correct their ways. I heard Atupu, one of the girls of the hotel, in a Rabelaisian passage of wit the while she opened Seattle beer for thirsty Britishers, old residents, traders, and planters. One could not publish the phrases if one could translate them.
In that house of mirth, brightness, and laughter, he was as a cunning and, at times, hateful jester, feared by the Tahitians, and, indeed, to whites a shadowy skeleton at the feast, a thing of indescribable possibilities. I knew him, he liked me, and I drew from him by motions and expressions some measure of his feelings and sufferings.
We crossed innumerable streams on our way, generally full not only of water, but also of bathers; for the Tahitians are very fond of water, and always bathe once or twice a day in the fresh streams, even after having been in the sea. In many places along the road people were making hay from short grass, and in others they were weighing it preparatory to sending it into town.
Comparisons of sanitation, order, neatness, and businesslike management of these islands, with the happy-go-lucky administration of the Society, Paumotus, Marquesas, and Austral archipelagoes, owned by the French, were frequent by the English. The French shrugged their shoulders. "The Tahitians are happy, and we send millions of francs to aid France," they said.
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