Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
When I awoke it was 6:30 a.m. and sunlight was pouring through the cabin ports. I went above and looked around; things looked less frightening than they had a few hours before. It was a perfect cloudless day, and the island shores seemed warmly green and inviting and the lagoon glistened and sparkled in unbelievable shades of turquoise and blue. Joe came up and we unlashed the dinghy and dragged it across the reef, then anchored it in the shallow water of the lagoon. We went back to the boat and I went below and started handing out equipment to Joe.
'Hey, Ron, here comes a boat full of natives!' he shouted when we had barely begun. I looked through the hatch and saw him shaking hands with a group of five dark-skinned Tahitian men. I went over and greeted them, quickly discovering that they spoke absolutely no English. Luckily, though, they spoke both French and Tahitian and we were able to carry on a halting conversation in French. As we had guessed, we were on Tubuai Manu, although the Tahitians referred to it as Maiao Iti. Tahiti was forty miles to the east, and a scheduled boat from there called at the island every two or three months to pick up wood and copra. Unfortunately, the boat had called at the island only two weeks previously; it seemed we were in for a lengthy stay on Maiao.
The men seemed anxious to get our things ashore and the large native surfboats were more suitable than our small dinghy for carrying stores and equipment. By 8:00 a.m. some thirty men were carrying our things to shore. Not bad for an island that the Pilot Book had said was uninhabited! By noon everything salvageable aboard had been taken to the beach, so we climbed into one of the pirogues and went ashore. Tinned goods, clothing, instruments, sails and all else lay piled on the beach.
As we stepped ashore, a handsome native in a brightly flowered pareu rushed forward and shook our hands warmly, smiling in a most friendly fashion. He looked rather dashing in his cowrie shell beads and had a red hibiscus bloom above his left ear. We found out later that he was the village homosexual. I suppose he was only anxious to let us know that everything in the village was available. Nice try! Maybe there were others but they didn't bother to identify themselves. I was amazed to find that homosexuality is fairly common in the islands. Amazed because it exists in an environment which provides an abundance of the old-fashioned kind of sex activity.
Now that everyone had had their little laugh, the village chief introduced himself. He was not garbed in expensive gowns and a crown, but was dressed like all of the other men in a workshirt and short pants and was barelegged and shoeless. His name was Leon, and he invited us to stay in his hut in the village. Everything was loaded into one large surfboat and we set off for the village, perched on top of our possessions. The men for whom there was no room in the boats followed along the shore.
After we had travelled about a mile and a quarter, we rounded a point of volcanic rock and entered a small cove. The shore was lined with pirogues and fish nets and lobster traps hung from the surrounding trees. We disembarked, then followed the chief inland along a sandy path flanked by coconut palms and hibiscus bushes. After about five more minutes of walking, we reached the village. Thatched huts raised on poles about four feet from the ground surrounded a central square.
An immense banyan tree stood in the centre of the square, its upper foliage spreading shade over an area the size of a tennis court. Chairs had been placed around the trunk and four natives sat quietly watching our approach, formally dressed and posed as though for an old-fashioned family portrait. Behind them a large semicircle of interested villagers, dressed for the most part in colourful pareus, chattered and giggled restlessly. We were led forward and introduced to the village Pastor, Benjamin Teura and his wife, both huge Polynesians in the old tradition. Then we we shook hands with the school teacher, who was a woman, the 'doctor', who had studied practical nursing for a time in Papeete and was on the island temporarily to administer anti-elephantiasis filariasis injections. We sat in the half-circle and made an attempt at conversation until dinner was served in the eating hut. I guess we were 'celebrities'!
Roast wild duck, rice, breadfruit, potatoes and onions comprised the main course. Some biscuits and jam from the boat's stores and thick, sweet, black French coffee made up the dessert. In the afternoon a sewing room on the verandah of the chief's hut was cleared out and made into a storeroom for our equipment and supplies. Later we were shown into the main sleeping room of the huge hut. Five large double beds covered with mosquito netting were placed around the walls and at Leon's urging we each picked a bed and threw our few personal toilet articles on them. About 8:00 p.m. the strain and excitement of the past twenty hours finally caught up to us and we excused ourselves and headed for the sleeping room.
'Wonder whose fart sacks we're stealing?' I asked Joe as I stretched out and pulled the mosquito netting over my head.
'I dunno,' he said sleepily, 'and what's more, Scarlet, I frankly don't give a damn!' A moment later we were both fast asleep. Some time later, I awoke briefly to the sound of gentle snoring. Three or four forms were distinguishable by the dim moonlight, stretched out on their sleeping mats on the wooden floor. None of the other beds were occupied. I had a vague twinge of conscience before dropping off to sleep again. I found out later that the beds were never used, but served as a mark of prestige for the chief. Sleeping anywhere but on the ground or the floorboards apparently caused our hosts to suffer from severe attacks of backache. The next morning after breakfast we were told that a detail of men were going back to the boat to attempt to drag her across the reef into the lagoon. It would then be an easy matter to float her the couple of hundred yards down to an opening in the reef and out again to the open sea.
We walked down to the cove and climbed into Leon's pirogue and were paddled along the lagoon toward the scene of the disaster. So far as I could ascertain, the 'detail' of men comprised the entire male population of the island, some forty or fifty men in all. Arrived on the shore opposite 'The Wren', we viewed a scene of bustling activity as trees were felled and stripped of their branches, then lashed together to be floated out to the boat. These logs, as it developed, were to be wedged under 'The Wren' on each beam and used in an attempt to pry her up out of the coral crevice in which she lay trapped. Lines were run forward from the mast, from the crosstrees and from the bow, and a dozen men lined up on each. With another half-dozen men stationed on each of the wedging poles, the master plan was ready to be executed. As self-appointed master of salvage operations, Roomataaroa Tutara, the doctor, stationed himself atop the cabin roof and alerted everyone for action. As each incoming sea broke, then rushed past the boat, it lifted a foot or so from the coral.
Tutara studied the seas carefully, then as a particularly large wave approached, he raised his arm dramatically; everyone tensed for a supreme effort. Then, as the surf roared in and around the boat and it surged upward, Tutara dropped his arm and everyone threw their utmost into their tasks. The men on the side-wedges threw themselves bodily onto the logs, bending them visibly from their weight. With a mighty shout the men on the drag lines pulled and strained like soldiers in a tug-o'-war. Nothing redemptive happened. The surf petered out into the lagoon and 'The Wren' settled back into her resting place as snugly as a setting hen. After an hour of fruitless yelling and heaving it was generally agreed that the efforts were virtually useless. Everyone climbed back into their pirogues and we returned to the village. That evening at supper we discussed the situation.
'It occurs to me we might have better luck if we bailed the water out of the boat,' I said.
'Could be!' Joe agreed, 'there must be quite a weight of it in there, at that!'
'Probably two or three tons of it, at least!' I said. 'Remember how she settled down after the water came in?'
'Yeah! It's worth a try, I guess! Maybe we'll have a try at patching her up and bailing her out tomorrow!' But he looked far from optimistic.
In the morning one of the village children arrived with the message that heavy seas during the night had done what our puny human muscles had been unable to accomplish. He said 'The Wren' had been lifted from the crevice and thrown thirty or forty feet further up on the coral.
Sure enough, when we arrived back at the reef, we found her lying on her side as he had described, but still some forty feet from the deep waters of the lagoon. A faint air of cautious optimism became evident once again as Joe patched the saucer-sized hole in the hull with a piece of canvas and some boards. Meanwhile, some of the men climbed into the cabin and began bailing out the seawater with whatever came to hand. The green canvas water bucket, the frying pan and the pot from the pressure cooker appeared and reappeared through the hatch, dumping their contents on the steeply sloping deck. I got another group to assist me in removing the temporary ballast from the bilge, handing the heavy iron bars from man to man and stacking them on the coral off to one side. Finally, after nearly an hour, we were ready to try moving her again. The logs could no longer serve any useful purpose so everyone concentrated on the forward lines.
Tutara assumed his command post again and gave the signal when the first sea that appealed to him surged past. Everyone heaved mightily at the lines then burst into a joyous roar as 'The Wren' slid forward two or three feet.
'I think maybe we've got her, old buddy!' I shouted to Joe.
'Could be! Got a long way to go yet, though,' he said, unable to suppress the smile of pleasure that lighted his face.
Tutara threw himself wholeheartedly into his job now, dancing around on the cabin top like a college cheerleader as he urged us to greater efforts with each wave. Each heave of the ropes now moved the boat a foot or more. When its progress was impeded by a huge coral head lying below the water, twelve of the men lifted it from one side and toppled it out of the way. A carnival air now prevailed and the men danced and roared with laughter as the splash from the descending coral drenched the bystanders. But as 'The Wren' was coaxed closer to the lagoon, she moved progressively farther from the full force of the breaking waves, until at last she lay in about two feet of water and the swells no longer lifted her free of the bottom. Once again we were forced to take reluctant leave of the stranded boat, just when success had seemed to be within our grasp.
During the next few days we visited the scene frequently but 'The Wren' seemed to have reached a final resting place. We racked our brains for methods by which to move her along the reef. I told Joe how we used to use logging chain tighteners to pull cars and trucks from mudholes during my surveying days in Western Canada.
'You just drive a steel bar into solid ground and run a chain from it back to the truck, then you work the 'come-along' back and forth and out comes the truck. It's slow work, I"ll admit, but time we got, let's face it!'
'So where do we get this chain?' Joe asked.
'Some outfit's bound to have that kind of gear in Tahiti!' I said, 'we'll rent it and come back!'
'The boat's too heavy, you'd never move it!' he said negatively.
'The hell you say! This kind of rig would move the Queen Mary... no kidding! Besides, we could get logs underneath for rollers; if it's still too heavy, we cut off the keel, then she's bound to move!'
'It won't work and I don't want to talk about it anymore, Okay,?'
'Okay!' I said. After that I never talked about it. A couple of years later someone told me they had read an item in the South Pacific Reporter about some enterprising types from Tahiti who had salvaged 'The Wren'. How did they do it? They cut off the keel!
After we abandoned our efforts to salvage 'The Wren', the days seemed to slip by like wind through my fingers. A pleasant lethargy possessed me, marred only by the uneasy feeling in my conscience, a result of modern American conditioning, that I should be doing something, and the knowledge that our families would be anxious. The mood obviously did not touch the island inhabitants. Each day the chief detailed half a dozen men to catch fish, a half dozen to cut wood and a few to strip copra. Otherwise there was no evident effort of any kind in any direction vaguely suggestive of work, in fact, one could see more obvious expense of energy in an American tourist resort in one day than in the village here in a week. Yet the meals were ready on schedule, sufficient fish and fruit and wild fowl were garnered to keep the tables loaded, dirty clothing disappeared soon after it was discarded, to return the next day pressed and spotlessly clean, and the yards were raked and the houses swept as if by nocturnal elfin hands.
There were many things different about this Tahitian village, but perhaps they were so simple and so obvious that they escaped the eye. Later they became apparent not by what we saw but what we realized we had not been seeing, or hearing, or doing, or wanting, for that matter. For instance, we didn't think too much about ten-year old David carting around ten-month old Liza all day, changing diapers, feeding, soothing, tickling; generally caring for her. Then we realized they didn't have paid baby sitters here; they were all built-in. The children competed for the favour. However, they wouldn't need a baby sitter even if the kids didn't care! The reason, of course, was that Mom and Dad weren't going any place at night anyway. The reason for this was that there was no place to go except to the neighbors, and they'd been shouting back and forth to them all day anyway. Going over there at night would be tantamount to overkill! No movies, no television, no automobiles or motorcycles, not even a radio! No liquor or beer! The strongest thing I tasted was the Vichy water left by Dr. Pye, a cruising yachtsman who had visited the island a year previously.
Beside the stone steps leading up to the verandah of the chief's hut was a large galvanized iron washtub. A half coconut shell floated in the water which half filled it. Rebecca, Leon's ten-year old daughter, would stop on the end stone of the bottom step, worn smooth by use, and slosh water over her bare feet, scrubbing them forward and backward at the same time. She would toss the shell back into the tub as she mounted to the top step where she would wipe both feet on a damp cloth spread there, then step up onto the verandah. The verandah led off to the right to the small sewing room, about eight feet square, where we had stored what food and equipment and sails were salvaged from the boat.
What I refer to as a verandah was actually inside the hut but was given this appearance by a wall of white-painted boards about nine feet high separating an eight foot strip on two sides of the interior from the main sleeping room. There was a couch on either side of the main doorway and numerous tables and straight-back chairs against the board partition. The four sides of the roof tapered to a ridgepole about eight feet long at least twenty-five feet above the floorboards and rafters running to it supported the closely-woven leaves that showed in a brown regular pattern on the inside but appeared very ragged on the outside. During the night when the lamps were blown out and I lay mummy-like on the huge bed with a swatch of mosquito netting covering my face and arms, I could hear the busy rustling of little creatures in the dry leaves overhead. They were the tiny fleet-footed lizards with bright fluorescent blue-green tails and twinkling eyes, that clung like flies to smooth surfaces and sometimes peeped from cracks in the walls to listen wisely to our evening conversations.
Pigs both large and small and of varied markings wandered like nomads through the yards and under the houses, foraging constantly for scraps of food. Seemingly as homeless as their desert counterparts, they seemed to present a complicated potential ownership problem until at noon or late in the afternoon, at feeding time, they would be seen streaking like hyperactive greyhounds through the undergrowth and across the square, their paths crisscrossing as each headed like a homing pigeon for its own hearth. Domestic fowl were equally numerous, with an emphasis on cocks of splendid colourations. They seemed to be unaware of the salve called sleep and spent the night hours crowing their challenges to each other through the still night air.
The wooden partition held a number of framed portraits, faded and yellow, and a cardboard rectangle with a couple of dozen faded snapshots glued to it. Above the dresser was a picture of de Gaulle, and along the top of the wall were a number of Biblical scenes in full colour: Jesus arriving in Nazareth; Jesus the boy carpenter; Jesus with the little children. I leaned closer to see if they had subtitles and read "The Providence Lithograph". The scenes were lovely but somehow I felt like I'd found a hamburger stand in a remote New Zealand jungle clearing.
Very early in the morning, before the sun had climbed into view above the small mountains overlooking the village, I would disentangle myself from the mosquito netting and roll out of bed. I would wrap on a pareu and toss a towel over my shoulder and walk down through the village square to the washhouse, enjoying the cool feel of the dew against my bare feet. Woven palm fronds enclosed a space five feet square to shoulder level. A half coconut shell floated in a five gallon bucket. After the first tentative splashings and dabbings I would be emboldened to dip a shellful of water to dash against myself. If the mood caught on I might even climax the ablutions by upending the bucket over my head. I must admit this reckless gesture was rare. I would retrieve the towel from where it hung over the wall with drying garments of varied colours and, wrapping on my pareu again, return to the house to await breakfast.
The cooking hut was almost the same as the dining hut it adjoined, but had a floor of dirt rather than raised planking. A long table between the two was used for mixing and preparation of the foods. Sometimes when I would see the smoke drifting up from the side window of the cooking hut, bright blue against the greenery before being swallowed in the vaster blue pool of the sky, I would stroll over and lean against the door jamb, watching the preparations within. All was as sombre as a blacksmith's shop but there was the bustle and purpose of the forges of Vulcan about it all. Two fires were going in diagonally opposite corners, fed from the piles of wood stacked against the walls. Through the smoky gloom I could see each of the men engaged in his particular chore. The women seemed to have no part in the proceedings, strangely enough. I didin't know at that time that women were considered to be 'tapu' in the preparation of food. To one side, squatting low on tiny stools shaped like hobby horses, would be a couple grating coconuts, rubbing the insides of the half shells over the sharp steel bar placed where the hobby horse head should be, with the scrapings dropping in snowy mounds to the plates below.
Squatting by the near fire, with a huge frying pan resting on the blackened grill of twisted iron between the surrounding rocks, one of the boys would be frying pancakes, the straw hat tipped back on his head, affording a strangely incongruous look, like a woman at a church picnic. Presiding over it all, immense and perspiring, with a spoon of equally extravagant proportions hanging from his hand was the Brillat-Savarin of Maiao-iti, M. Le Pastor.
I derived particular delight and inspiration from his faultless preparation of the rice for the noon meal. An enormous black gipsy-type kettle of cast iron was charged with the rice ration which was submerged to an equal depth with water and placed over the glowing coals. Within a few minutes the water was boiling, then the lid was lifted from time to time to reveal the bubbles of foam filling the kettle to the brim. I expected some stirring or shaking, a tap or two or a final draining, but saw only further peepings and exchanges of monosyllabic gruntings. Then, at just the proper moment, the kettle was lifted from the heat and set aside. The lid was raised to reveal to my appraising eyes a steaming bed of perfectly cooked, moist white kernels, which reached the table fluffy and tender, free from the gummy adhesion which is the lot of so much of the rice which emerges from the gleaming white thermometrically controlled ovens of modern American kitchens. The other fire was used for cooking the special dishes which needed prolonged steaming, the salubrious vapours rising from the steaming mound of leaves and sacks and hot rocks whetting my curiosity regarding the contents within. Suckling pig? Whole crabs or lobsters? Breadfruit? The conjecture regarding the hidden dishes was almost as pleasant as their consumption Yeah, right!
The dining room was a separate palm-thatched hut containing a large table and chairs, and a bar for the storage of condiments and plates and cooking utensils behind which the more timid of the children hid while we were eating our meals. Only the four of us ate first, the Pastor, the visiting pharmacist and ourselves. Mama and the older children sat on a bench in front of the bar, watching and ready to serve, although not often called upon, since all of the food was placed on the table at once. Dogs in abundance scratched and lounged under foot and sometimes the proud orange cat came and sat on the big armchair behind me, a fact I would not usually discover unless I leaned back. A glance and a wink at any one of the great dark eyes fixed upon us was sufficient to reduce their owner to an ecstatic fit of giggling embarrassment, face hidden behind their hands or in Mama's skirts.
The abundance and variety of the foods would have delighted the palate of Diamond Jim himself. A huge separate bowl for containing portions of the main dishes sat in front of each of us. Directly before us was placed a large soup plate in which sat a pudding bowl of coffee. And what coffee! Thick black freshly-ground brew that surpassed anything in my experience, sweetened with a couple of spoonfuls of the dark brown sugar heaped on a plate in the centre of the table, it caressed my palate like no coffee has before or since.
The Pastor's inimitable rice formed the foundation of most of the meals. When we had built a bulwark of the fluffy white kernels an inch deep over the bottom of our plates we could drown it in any of the hot dishes provided. Fricassee of wild duck with tomato and onion sauce? Perhaps beef and tomato and corn stew, or bananas fried or boiled whole in oil? Delicious! Raw fresh fish in lime juice with sliced raw onions? Must be eaten to be believed! Cracked whole crabs? Mussels in sour coconut cream? Pancakes rolled in brown sugar; grilled fish in tomato sauce or plain. They all appeared in their turn then reappeared again, along with cooked breadfruit, fried potatoes, mangoes, raw bananas, pawpaws, guavas and many more. One day we found a whole roast suckling pig steaming in the centre of the table, just removed from the hot rock oven where it had been cooked till the flesh fell from the bones at a touch. And so it went , day after day, each meal a veritable Tahitian feast in the old style, and we sipped and sampled and swallowed until our limit was reached and we pushed our chairs back from the table, locked our hands over our bulging stomachs and gasped 'Paia!' with a long drawn sigh of contentment.
Each evening, when dinner was finished and we had pushed back our chairs and M. Le Pastor and I had lighted up a couple of the Henri Winterman cigars I had saved from the boat, slightly moldy now, but smokeable, he would lever his huge bulk from his chair and waddle with slow dignity to the house where all the children waited, sitting expectantly on the verandah.
'M'sieur Ron?' Coleano would shout. We were exchanging language tuition.
'Oui?'
'Haere aori? Danse?'
'Arauai! Hioti te himene!' Later! After the hymns!
Seated again, near the door of his study, Benjamin would raise one pudgy finger as a signal. Then a high, clear voice would begin, falling down the scale like cascading waters, to be joined at the bottom by a chorus of eager, untrained voices, practically shouting their enjoyment of this exciting climax to their day. I would sit back in the beach chair in the darkened living room, drawing slowly on my cigar and listening to the youthful choir. After three or four hymns, the pastor would say his short blessing in Tahitian and there would be a scramble of bare feet as they trooped in to shake hands. I would choose one at a time from the dozen or more thrust toward me, thanking each in turn, "Maururu! Maururu! Maururu!"
Then came the older girls, eyes fixed shyly on the wooden flooring, blushing furiously and lastly the Pastor himself, dripping with perspiration, smiling benignly, his hand clasp like that of a corpulent gorilla. When the hymns were finished and I had shaken the last tiny brown hand, and the house fell silent save for the gurgling of the baby and the low mutter of voices on the porch, I would hear the sound of the guitars and ukeleles and chanting voices throbbing through the dark. Then we would pick our way carefully along the path, through the empty creek bed and past the pig pen, to the porch where a dozen or more young people sat singing the hypnotic Tahitian chants. There was always only one guitar, but never less than four ukeleles to give the pulsing beat to the music.
There would be two or three tunes that seemed fast until suddenly the group would break into one of the rapid tattoo-like tamures and a pair of dancers would leap into the centre of the group, each with one arm extended like a boxer, the other waving before his face, fist clenched, knees bent almost to the ground, feet lifting and shifting swiftly as the hips swung and swirled and quivered and shook in an erotic, abandoned, demanding manner, far too strenuous for anyone to maintain. When they tired, others took their place, lured into the circle by the frantic, overpowering message of the music, and the atavistic response to the rhythm of the dance. It was impossible to remain still. Those not dancing or playing, sang, clapped their hands, shouted, bounced and swayed as the music surged relentlessly on. When a dancer moved in front of me it was not an exhibition or display, it was a demand, an imperious, exotic, forthright challenge that could not be mistaken and was not to be ignored and only answered when, with a strong shove from half a dozen hands, I found myself propelled into the centre of the group, bouncing, shaking, bumping, grinding, shouting till the music stopped like a radio switched off and I fell exhausted to the ground.
One day we walked out along the beach past the point where the boat lay, then down along a shallow salt-water lagoon that curved around out of sight about two hundred yards from the shore line. Coleano carred a couple of the special rigs they used for catching salt water crayfish, which they called 'varo'. Sticks about the size of lead pencils had half a dozen fishhooks bound grapnel-like to one end.. From the other end, a piece of stout cord about four feet in length was fastened, this terminating in a six inch long piece of driftwood the thickness of a broomstick. As we walked along, a couple of the locals who were accompanying us hurled their many-pronged spears at the shoals of sardine-like fish they spotted in the waters of the lagoon. By the time we reached the end of the lagoon, which spread out into a huge tidal flat, they had speared several small, silver-sided fish for use as bait. Coleano sat down and sliced a minnow in half longitudinally then bound the two halves, raw side out, to the stick above the hooks. When all was in readiness he splashed into the shallow water and began searching the sandy bottom.
'Voila!' he cried after a few moments, and pointed downward. I went over and looked at the tiny hole in the sand. It seemed no different from the many other small openings made by crabs and clams and mussels, and certainly too small to admit the baited stick he dangled in his hand. As he lowered the hooks gently to the hole, however, the sand at the sides broke away, leaving a hole about the diameter of a golf ball. He lowered the baited stick into the hole a couple of feet. The wooden peg at the end of the string floated in the knee-deep water; then he flicked his fingers in the water above the hole with a gesture like Tom Sawyer's aunt giving him the business on the skull with her thimble. 'Pourquoi?' I asked.
'Te varo est dorme!' he answered. 'Ce ça il endormi!' He's asleep! That'll waken him! After about ten minutes the hooks were drawn up empty and we went on to another, then another, all without results. In the meantime, while wating at one of the sets, Coleano had sat down and woven a basket of generous proportions from coconut palm fronds he had slashed down with his machete. An apparent optimist!
When he started to draw up the hooks from the fourth hole I knew from the sudden excitement in his face that we had results.
'Attention, attention!' he whispered. He drew up the cord ever so slowly, inch by inch and finally, as a grotesque head like that of a mantis appeared at the opening, he pulled more quickly and drew up a large, threshing crayfish, fully a foot long. It was sand-coloured and plump.
'Papa!' Coleano explained triumphantly, placing the apparatus back in the hole, 'maintenant, cherchez Mama!'
'Que est la différence?' I asked in my fractured French.
'Mama est toute rouge!' he said, and sure enough, when he drew up another crayfish a few minutes later, it was smaller and had a bright blush of red along its back. We caught four altogether and ere many hours had passed, the unsuspecting crustaceans that had protested their precipitate removal so violently were once more tucked securely away, safe from light and further disturbance, but not in fit condition to appreciate it. They were delicious!
A week and a half had passed in this sybaritic fashion when at noon one day, the children came rushing to say that a fishing boat had arrived. After a few minutes I could hear the faint putt-putt of a diesel engine, carried on the breeze from the northern side of the island. Joe had gone fishing with some of the locals earlier in the day and did not return for the midday meal, so, after eating, Tutara and I walked across the island to have a look at the boat and talk to the skipper. We splashed through tidal flats covered with lukewarm salt water, and along a path through forests of coconut palms. As we walked along, land crabs scuttled into their burrows, then peeped out as we passed. Sometimes we would catch one off guard, too far from its burrow to reach it, and it would stand its ground bravely, with its pinching claw, longer than its body, held in front of it like a longstave.
When we finally reached the far side of the island we saw first the shed with a few cans of kerosene and other supplies stacked in it and half a dozen men lounging around and smoking. The gap in the reef was no more than twice the width of a Cadillac and the tiny twenty-foot boat was anchored fore and aft just inside the opening. We approached and shook hands with the captain, a Parisian-born Frenchman named Jean Guyonnet. He was lean and tanned and in motion constantly; I learned that he had served with the French forces in Indo-China. Upon discharge he had used his savings to come to Tahiti and buy a small diesel-powered bonita boat which he used for trading amongst the Society islands. He still wore his broad-brimmed army foraging hat, pinned up on one side in the fashion of the Australian fighting men. When we enquired about transportation to Tahiti he explained that it would depend on the size of the load he had, but that there was a good chance he could squeeze us in somewhere. He accompanied us back to the village where we found that he was a very popular and well-liked figure. That night we had a feast supervised by Benjamin Teura. As soon as it was finished we were all marched over to the hut of the village constable, Teiho by name, where we were compelled to begin all over again.
The noon meal was prepared early on the following day to give us time to pack and carry our equipment the two miles across the island to where the little bonita boat was anchored. I shouldered a pack and carried my rifle in one hand and my typewriter in the other. The village boys were strung out ahead of and behind me along the path, carrying various bits of our equipment. We left a great deal of stuff behind, including food, tools, bedding and instruments. When we reached the hut near the boat anchorage, I dropped my load and rested a few minutes before starting back with Leon for the rest of my gear. After we had walked about a quarter of a mile back along the path we saw a midget procession approaching. It was the pastor's little girls and their playmates, each carrying an article of equipment. One carried my spear-gun, one my camera tripod, two carried tin boxes full of film. I feigned surprise as we passed, rolling my eyes and popping my mouth open, Eddie Cantor style, a performance which never failed to reduce them to hysterics. They had everything but one heavy rucksack and we had gone only a few hundred yards further when we met the chief of police and his brother carrying a live pig lashed to a pole over their shoulders. My rucksack swung behind the pig so we turned around and followed them back to the boat. The men had not finished fishing when we arrived, so we watched them out in the shallow water of the lagoon, some with paddles slapping the water and walking slowly toward the men drawing the net slowly closed.
Jean, the French trader, was impatient and insisted that the weighing and counting of the other produce commence. The men sat around inside the hut, on sacks and lumber piled on the raised floor. Each in turn brought his goods forward and presented them for pricing. First there were the crabs. Teiho came forward with a large basket of woven palm fronds looking like an oversized purse and closed tightly all round. He pulled out the lashing at the top and reached in cautiously, then, with a quick grab, captured and withdrew a flailing, pea-green crab the size of a saucer, its great whitish pincers clutching futilely for the fingers holding it expertly at the back of the shell. After a nod of approval from Jean, he dropped it into a large wooden packing case and reached for another. He produced twelve in all before stepping aside for the next man. His name and the number of crabs were noted in the little book.
'Douze! Teiho! Bien, allez! Vite!' Jean fussed, snapping his fingers with impatience.
A man appeared with a basket containing a dozen or more big clams the size of a man's fist.
'Combien?' Jean asked.
'Trente!' Thirty francs. Half a dollar! the Frenchman nodded and marked his book. Then came the lobsters.
'Ah, les langoustes!'Jean said as he looked at a dozen huge lobsters, blue and orange and beautifully horrifying in appearance, lying on their green bed of leaves in a wooden packing case. They were counted and a price agreed on and marked in the little red book. When each case was full the boards were nailed and hammered down on the top and the case set aside. Meanwhile the women sat weaving baskets in another shed to one side.
And so the counting and weighing and dealing continued, through the fowl and the pigs and the coconuts and finally the fish, which the men carried up from the lagoon, tied in silvery bundles slung over poles carried between their shoulders.
Then the loading commenced, and with each trip the surfboat made, we saw the small amount of available passenger space reduced till, when all was stowed, the boat was a veritable floating barnyard and we sat on crab and lobster cases, with fowl overhead and our feet resting on the bristly black sides of the unhappy pigs. We shouted our sad final farewells to the islanders who had welcomed us into their homes, then the lines were cast off and we were away.
— The End —