There’s a yearning in every person, I truly believe, to explore and discover the unfamiliar places of the world. Life confines us all within its web of circumstances, and the romantic dreams of childhood fade away, but they never completely disappear. They resurface at the sight of a white-sailed ship heading out to the vast ocean, the smell of tarred rope on a weathered dock, or the feel of the cool breeze that comes in when the stars appear. Somewhere beyond the horizon is romance, and every heart longs to seek it out.

It’s not meant for everyone to go after the end of the rainbow. Such a wild chase isn’t for someone tied down by home, responsibilities, and the need to build a fortune. They have their own adventures to face, tougher battles to fight, and maybe even greater rewards to earn. Yet, sometimes the books close with a sigh, and by the coziest fireplace, one can see in the glowing coals images that have nothing to do with wedding rings or bank balances.

It’s for those who stay at home but dream of faraway places that I’ve written this book, a record of one happy year spent among the simple, friendly people of Atuona Valley, on the island of Hiva-oa in the Marquesas. Its pages contain little profound research and, I’m afraid, nothing to surprise anthropologists or change encyclopedias; that expectation was far from my mind when I set sail from Papeete on the Morning Star. I went to see what I would see and to learn whatever life chose to teach me as the days went by. What I saw and what I learned, the reader will see and learn, and nothing more.

Days, just like people, tend to offer more when approached with a lighthearted attitude. So I traveled light, without the heavy burdens of a serious scholar, and anyone joining me on this "long cruise" only needs to bring an open mind and a passion for the unusual and beautiful. I hope they return, as I did, with insights into the ancient customs of our long-lost ancestors, a greater appreciation for the mysteries of the world, and memories of sunny days on white beaches, surrounded by palms and orchids, and the innocent, primitive people who live in the breadfruit groves of "Bloody Hiva-oa."

The author wants to thank Rose Wilder Lane, whose editorial help made it possible for this book to be published.

Farewell to Papeete beach; out at sea on the Morning Star; Darwin's theory about the continent that vanished beneath the waters of the South Seas.

The trade room of the Morning Star; Lying Bill Pincher; M. L'Hermier des Plantes, future governor of the Marquesas; story of McHenry and the little native boy, His Dog

Thirty-seven days at sea; the life of the seabirds; strange glowing lights; first view of Fatu-hiva; history of the islands; song of the Raiateans

Anchorage of Taha-Uka; Exploding Eggs, and his job as a valet; swearing in of the new governor; dance on the palace lawn

First night in Atuona valley; incredible arrival of the Golden Bed; Titihuti's tattooed legs

Visit of Chief Seventh Man Who is So Angry He Wades in the Mud; journey to Vait-hua on Tahuata island; fight with the devil-fish; story of a cannibal feast and the two who got away

Idyllic valley of Vait-hua; the beauty of Vanquished Often; swimming at the beach; an unexpected marriage proposal

Communal living; surfing the waves; the battle between the sharks and the mother whale; a day in the mountains; the death of Captain Halley; return to Atuona

The Marquesans at ten o'clock mass; a fascinating discussion about religions and Joan of Arc in which Great Fern shares his thoughts on the devil.

The marriage of Malicious Gossip; wedding traditions of the straightforward locals; the household challenges of Haabuani

Filling the popoi pits during breadfruit season; the story of the mei; the secret festival in a secluded valley

A walk in the jungle; the elderly woman in the breadfruit tree; a night in a local hut on the mountain

The home of Lam Kai Oo; making copra; wonders of the coconut groves; the cleverness of pigs; and a crab that understands the laws of gravity.

Visit of Le Moine; the story of Paul Gauguin; his house, and a search for his grave beneath the white cross of Calvary

Death of Aumia; funeral song and burial practices; reasons for the death of a race

A wild dance, a story of the ocean, filled with risk and celebration; the tearing apart of the lettuce

A walk to the Forbidden Place; Hot Tears, the hunchback; the story of Behold the Servant of the Priest, shared by Malicious Gossip in the cave of Enamoa.

A search for rubber trees on the Ahoa plateau; a battle with the wild white dogs; the story of an ancient migration, shared by the wild cattle hunters in the Cave of the Spine of the Chinaman.

A celebration for the men of Motopu; preparing kava, and drinking it; the tale of the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.

A trip to Taaoa; Kahuiti, the cannibal chief, and his tale of an old war sparked by a disloyal woman

The crime of Huahine for love of the Weaver of Mats; story of Tahia's white man who was eaten; the disaster that happened to Honi, the white man who used his harpoon against his friends.

The memorable game for the matches in the coconut grove of Lam Kai.

Ms. N——

A trip to Nuka-hiva; story of the celebration of the feast of Joan of Arc, and the miracles of the white horse and the girl

America's claim to the Marquesas; adventures of Captain Porter in 1812; the war between Haapa and Tai-o-hae, and the conquest of Typee valley

A visit to Typee; story of the old guy who came back too late

Journey on the Roberta; the winged cockroaches; arrival at a Swiss paradise in the valley of Oomoa

Labor in the South Seas; some random thoughts on the "survival of the fittest"

The white guy who danced in Oomoa Valley; a wild boar hunt in the hills; the celebration of the victorious hunters and a dance in honor of Grelet

A visit to Hanavave; Père Olivier at home; the story of the last battle between Hanahouua and Oi, told by the only survivor; the creation of tapa cloth, and the traditional garments of the Marquesans.

Fishing in Hanavave; a deep-sea fight with a shark; Red Chicken shows how to tie ropes to sharks' tails; night fishing for dolphins, and the huge swordfish that capsized the canoe; the local doctor treats Red Chicken's wounds and talks about medicine.

A trip across the roof of the world to Oomoa; a meeting with a wild woman from the hills

Return in a canoe to Atuona; Tetuahunahuna shares the story of the girl who rode the white horse during the celebration of Joan of Arc in Tai-o-hae; Evidence that sharks dislike women; navigating by the stars to Atuona beach.

Sea sports; interesting seafood found at low tide; the quirks of sea centipedes and how to prepare and eat them

Court day in Atuona; the case of Daughter of the Pigeon and the sewing machine; the tale of the betrayal by Drink of Beer and the death of Earth Worm who attempted to kill the governor.

The crazy Great Moth of the Night; a tale of the famine and the one family that ate pig.

A visit to the hermit of Taha-Uka valley; the revenge that turned the Scallamera lepers; and the hatred of Mohuto

Last days in Atuona; My Darling Hope's letter from her son

The farewell chants echo; night falls over the Land of the War Fleet.

Village of Atuona, showing peak of Temetiu

Beach at Viataphiha-Tahiti

Where the belles of Tahiti lived in the shade to whiten their complexions

Lieutenant L'Hermier des Plantes, Governor of the Marquesas Islands

Entrance to a Marquesan Bay

The ironbound coast of the Marquesas

A road in Nuka-Hiva

Harbor of Tai-o-hae

Schooner Fetia Taiao in the Bay of Traitors

André Bauda, Commissaire

The public dance in the garden

Antoinette, a Marquesan dancing girl

Marquesans in Sunday clothes

Vai Etienne

The pool by the Queen's house

Idling away the sunny hours

Nothing to do but rest all day

Catholic Church at Atuona

A native spearing fish from a rock

A volunteer cocoanut grove, with trees of all ages

Climbing for cocoanuts

Splitting cocoanut husks in copra making process

Cutting the meat from cocoanuts to make copra

A Marquesan home on a paepae

Isle of Barking Dogs

The haka, the Marquesan national dance

Hot Tears with Vai Etienne

The old cannibal of Taipi Valley

Enacting a human sacrifice of the Marquesans

Interior of Island of Fatu-hiva, where the author walked over the mountains

The plateau of Ahoa

Kivi, the kava drinker with the hetairae of the valley

A pool in the jungle

The Pekia, or Place of Sacrifice, at Atuona

Marquesan cannibals, wearing dress of human hair

Tepu, a Marquesan girl of the hills, and her sister

A tattooed Marquesan with carved canoe paddle

A chieftess in tapa garments with tapa parasol

Launching the whale-boat

Père Simeon Delmas' church at Tai-o-hae

Gathering the feis in the mountains

Near the Mission at Hanavave

Starting from Hanavave for Oomoa

Feis, or mountain bananas

Where river and bay meet at Oomoa, Island of Fatu-hiva

Sacred banyan tree at Oomoa

Elephantiasis of the legs

Removing the pig cooked in the umu, or native oven

The Koina Kai, or feast in Oomoa

Beach at Oomoa

Putting the canoe in the water

Pascual, the giant Paumotan pilot and his friends

A pearl diver's sweetheart

Spearing fish in Marquesas Islands

Pearl shell divers at work

Catholic Church at Hanavave

A canoe in the surf at Oomoa

The gates of the Valley of Hanavave

A fisherman's house of bamboo and cocoanut leaves

Double canoes

Harbor sports

Tahaiupehe, Daughter of the Pigeon, of Taaoa

Nataro Puelleray and wife

Author's Note. Foreign words in a book are like rocks in a path. There are two ways to deal with this challenge: the reader can jump over them, or use them as stepping stones. I’ve written this book so that they can easily be skipped by those in a hurry, but doing so will mean missing out on a lot of enjoyment; I encourage you to pronounce them as you read. Marquesan words have a unique charm; much of the simple poetry of the islands is in them. The rules for pronouncing them are straightforward: consonants sound like they do in English, while vowels have a Latin pronunciation—so a is ah, e is ay, i is ee, o is oh, and u is oo. Every letter is pronounced, and there are no accents. The Marquesans had no written language, and missionaries recorded their spoken language as simply as possible.

Goodbye to Papeite beach; out at sea on the Morning Star; Darwin's theory about the continent that sank beneath the waters of the South Seas.

By the white coral wall of Papeite beach, the schooner Fetia Taiao (Morning Star) was ready to set sail. Beneath the soaring green hills of Tahiti, the narrow shoreline was filled with colorful dresses, dark faces, and slender arms waving. All of Papeite, adorned with flowers and teary-eyed, was gathered by the blue lagoon.

Lamentation and wailing followed the brown sailors as they came over the side and slowly began to cast off the ropes holding the Morning Star. Few ships sail for many seasons among the Dangerous Islands. They end up wrecked on rocks or reefs or sink in the deep sea, and the lovers, sons, and husbands of the women who cry on the beach never return to the huts in the coconut groves. So, with each departure on the "long course," the pain is intense.

“Ia ora na i te Atua! Goodbye and God bless you!” the women shouted as they stood next to the half-buried cannon that secured the ships near the coral reef. From the deck of the nearby Hinano, the sounds of an accordion and a chorus of familiar lyrics drifted over:

It was the Himene Tatou Arearea. Kelly, the wandering I.W.W., self-proclaimed delegate of the imagined Union of Beach-combers and Stowaways, was at the accordion, and around him sat a circle of cheerful locals. “Wela ka hao! Awesome!” they shouted.

Suddenly, Caroline from the Marquesas and Mamoe from Moorea, the most beautiful dancers on the docks, jumped into the upaupahura, the romantic dance of love. Kelly started singing “Tome! Tome!” a Hawaiian hula. Men unloading cargo from the many schooners put down their loads and began to dance. Rough men from the foredeck kept the beat with their cups. Clerks in the traders' stores and even Marechel, the barber, were pulled away from their counters and chairs by the enticing melody, and bareheaded under the bright sun, they danced beneath the crowded balconies of the Cercle Bougainville, the club by the lagoon. The harbor of Papeite experienced ten minutes of pure joy, forgetting their tears, while from the navy warehouse to the Poodle Stew café, the hula took over.

Under the beautiful flamboyant trees that spread their shade with red-gold blossoms, a group of white men sang:

The anchor was up, the lines were released, and suddenly a wind with rain came in from the sea.

The girls from the Cocoanut House, a flurry of bright red and pink dresses, ran for cover, tossing sweet tiati Tahiti flowers at their sailor lovers as they went. Marao, the proud queen, drove off quickly in her old carriage, with Princess Boots leaning out to wave a delicate hand. Prince Hinoi, the chubby spender who could have been a king, leaned out from the balcony of the club, a glass in hand, and shouted, “Aroha i te revaraa!” across the empty beach.

So we left Papeete, the vibrant Tahitian capital, as a heavy downpour soaked the bright flamboyant flowers, our masts and rigging creaking in the strong wind, and waves crashing white on the coral reef.

Like the crying women, who had probably already wiped away their tears, the sky started to brighten before we got to the dangerous pass in the outer reef. Beyond Moto Utu, the small island in the harbor that used to be a harem and a fort in royal times, we saw the waves crashing on the coral, and soon we were through the narrow channel.

We didn’t set any sails in the lagoon, just relying on our engine to get away from the coral traps. Beyond the constant threat, with the wind blowing at about half a gale and the rain pouring down in sheets—the usual drenching of the season—the Morning Star, with its reduced foresail, mainsail, and staysail, headed her fragile nose toward the Dangerous Islands and crashed into the open sea.

She rode the constantly tossing waves like a seagull, holding her head high with a carefree attitude and dipping playfully into the waves. Her shape was sleek, elegant, and beautiful, even to the eye of someone unfamiliar with the sea.

A hundred and six feet from bow to stern, twenty-three feet wide, and ten feet deep, she was loaded to the brim with cargo for the islands we were headed to. Lumber filled the narrow spaces between the cabin house and the rails; even the lifeboats were stacked with cargo. Those who calculate risks don't laugh much in these waters. There was barely any room to move on the deck of the Morning Star; only a few steps were possible behind the wheel, dodging the swing of the main-sheet boom and traveler. While my three fellow passengers went below deck, I stood there, staring at the rain-swept endless ocean ahead.

Where is the boy who hasn’t dreamed of the cannibal islands, those strange, incredible places beyond the edge of the world, where naked brown men move like shadows through unimaginable jungles, and terrifying feasts are held to the “boom, boom, boom!” of twelve-foot drums?

Years bring knowledge, bought with the dreams of youth. The wide, uncertain world becomes familiar, even routine. London, Paris, Venice, colorful Cairo, the damaged crypts of the pyramids, the crumbling villages of Palestine, no longer shine before me with the bright allure of imagination, because I have seen them. Yet, some of the boyish excitement I felt when I read Melville long ago came back to me while I stood on the deck of the Morning Star, cutting through the choppy Pacific in the pouring tropical rain.

Many leagues ahead of us were the Dangerous Islands, the Low Archipelago, the first stop on our journey to the distant cannibal islands another thousand miles away across the empty seas. Before we caught sight of the green banners of Tahiti's coconut palms again, we would travel not just forward over leagues of rolling water but also backward through centuries of time. For in those islands, cut off from the world for ages, there exists a living piece of the childhood of our Caucasian race.

Darwin's theory suggests that these islands are the peaks of a submerged continent or land bridge that extends its worn-out body along the Pacific floor for thousands of miles. A lost land, whose story is waiting for a storyteller; a mystery that may never be solved. There are impressive structures, carved objects, ancient writings, traditions and languages, island communities with intriguing legends—all possibly remnants of a migration from Asia or Africa a hundred thousand years ago.

Over this land bridge, perhaps, the Caucasian people ventured, the main ancestry in Polynesia today, and when the continent disappeared from the view of the sun and stars except for those mountainous islands like Tahiti and the Marquesas, the survivors were cut off for countless centuries.

Here on these islands, the brothers of our long-forgotten ancestors have lived and thrived since the Stone Age, cut off from the main stream of human development. Here, they have preserved the childhood customs of our white race, wild and untamed, within their primitive and raw lifestyle. Three centuries ago, they were discovered by the people of the wider world, and confronted with a civilization they didn’t create, they are fading away. With their disappearance goes the last living connection to our own prehistoric past. And I was meant to witness it before it vanishes forever.

The trading room of the Morning Star; Bill Pincher, a smooth talker; M. L'Hermier des Plantes, the next governor of the Marquesas; the tale of McHenry and the little native boy, along with His Dog.

“Come have a drink!” Captain Pincher shouted from the cabin, and leaving the spray-soaked deck where the rain pounded on the canvas awning, I went down the four steps into the cramped cabin.

The cabin, about twenty feet long, had a small semi-private room for Captain Pincher and four bunks arranged around a table. Here, gathered around a jug of rum, I found Captain Pincher with my three fellow passengers: McHenry and Gedge, the traders, and M. L'Hermier des Plantes, a young officer of the French colonial army, headed to the Marquesas to serve as their governor.

The captain was sharing the tale of the wreck where he lost his old ship. He had anchored near a reef for a card game with another skipper who was docked next to him. While they were sleeping, the wind shifted. Captain Pincher woke up to see his schooner getting smashed against the coral rocks.

“Can you predict what the dang wind will do?” he said, banging the table with his glass. “Willy's schooner was tied up next to me, and it caught a gust and slipped away, while my boat smashed its sides open on the reef. The whole dang atoll was piled up with the cargo. Willy got lucky; I got nothing. It's all just a gamble.”

He hadn't found his H's since he left Liverpool thirty years ago, nor did he stop using his silly curse words. A gray-haired, red-faced, laughing man, stocky and mild-mannered, he turned out, as the afternoon went on, to be someone from whom Münchausen could have gotten a story or two.

“They call me Lying Bill,” he said to me. “You can’t believe what I say.”

"Bill Pincher is as straight as a mango tree," McHenry declared loudly. "He’s terrible at telling stories, but he’s the best sailor that comes to T'yti, and he’s as honest as they come. Remember when that schooner he was the mate on got stolen, and that rotten thief ran off with it and a woman? Bill went after them and brought the schooner back from Chile. Bill is exactly what he claims to be, no doubt about it—but he can sail a schooner, buy copra and shells at a good price, sell goods to the locals, and bring back the money for the owners. That’s what I call an honest man."

Lying Bill took these hearty words with something less than his usual good humor. There was no warmth in his eyes as he looked at McHenry, whose empty glass stayed empty until McHenry filled it himself. McHenry, with a bullet-shaped head, tiny eyes, and a body molded by countless shady escapades, grasped at equality with these men, but it slipped away from him. Lying Bill didn't respond to his enthusiastic praise and retreated to his bunk with a paperback novel. To mask the snub, McHenry started talking about business with Gedge, who didn't say much.

The traderoom of the Morning Star, opening from the cabin, was like a doorway to romance for me. When I was a kid, traderooms had more excitement than war. Seeing one would've felt like catching a glimpse of the Holy Grail for a devoted knight. Those traderooms in my youthful imagination smelled of rum and gunpowder, and alongside them were racks of rifles ready to fend off the shadowy figures climbing over the bulwarks.

The traderoom of the Morning Star smelled bad, too. It had no window, and when you opened the door, everything was dark at first, while the smells of strong Tahiti tobacco, cheap cotton prints, a broken bottle of perfume, and scented soaps fought for attention. Slowly, your eyes adjusted to reveal shelves and bins filled with goods piled from floor to ceiling: pins and anchors, harpoons and pens, crackers and jewelry, fabric, shoes, medicine and tomahawks, socks and writing paper.

Trade business, McHenry's monologue explained, is no longer what it used to be. Back then, these small merchants wouldn’t even trust themselves on land; their guns stood watch against overly eager customers. But now, almost every inhabited island has its own little store, and the trader has to chase after his buyers, who are dying off so quickly that he has to move from island to island in search of people.

“Alcohol is king,” said McHenry. “I have two thousand pounds in a bank in Australia, all made by selling liquor to the locals. It's against French law to sell, trade, or give them a drop, but we all do it. If you don’t have it, you can’t get shipments. During the diving season, it’s the only thing that will get you through. The divers will pay between five to fifteen dollars a bottle for it, depending on whether the French are working or not. Isn’t that right, Gedge?”

“It's true,” Gedge agreed. He spoke in French, seemingly for the benefit of M. L'Hermier des Plantes. The young governor of the Marquesas didn't say much; his main interest in life seemed to be his impressive black whiskers, to which he gave constant care. After exchanging a few phrases in broken English, he had turned his casual attention to the pages of a Marquesan dictionary, getting ready for his future work with the locals. Gedge, on the other hand, continued to converse in the refined language of the courts.

It was clear that McHenry's twenty-five years in French territories hadn’t taught him the language of the white man. He bluntly asked, “What are you oui-oui-ing for?” and sometimes threw in a few words of broken French to try to be friendly. Gedge hardly noticed this.

Gedge was the head of the business side of the expedition, and his demeanor made that clear. He had thin lips, sharp eyes, and an air of strength and independence, all focused on trade opportunities. He had spent twenty years in the Marquesas Islands. A savvy businessman among the locals, who he described as lacking scruples, he had thrived. Now, after selling his business, he was making one last trip to his long-time home to wrap things up.

“’That old woman is a barefoot girl among the cannibals,” Lying Bill told me later. “’He has given a whole army of ostriches to fortune, he has.”

One of Captain Pincher's sons was an assistant to the engineer, Ducat, and helped with the cargo work. The boy lived at the front with the crew, so we didn’t see him socially, and his father only talked to him to give an order or a reprimand. Native mothers often lament the absence of fatherly affection from their white partners. Illegitimate children aren’t valued by the whites.

For two days at sea after leaving Papeete, we didn't see the sun. It was the rainy and hot season, a time for calm and hurricanes, sudden squalls and frustrating stillness, when all signs fail and the sailor has to be ready for whatever the wind decides to do if he wants to save himself and his ship. For hours, we sped along at seven or eight knots, with a strong breeze coming from behind and the waves splashing around our bow. For even longer hours, we moved through a windless calm using the motor. Showers fell nonstop.

We lived in pajamas, barefoot, unshaven, and unwashed. Fresh water was limited, and it would be impossible to refill our casks for many weeks. McHenry said it wasn't hard to get used to not having water, both for washing and drinking.

There was always a big glass jug of strong Tahitian rum ready in the cabin. We would sit here to eat, then stay to drink, read, and smoke. There was Bordeaux wine at lunch and dinner, and Martinique and Tahitian rum and absinthe in between meals. The ship's bell was rung by the steersman every half hour, and McHenry turned it into a signal for an ounce.

Captain Pincher took a drink every hour or two and went back to his cabin and novels, leaving the navigation of the Morning Star to the junior officers. Ducat, the third officer, who was from Brittany, joined us for meals. He was a good, smart guy in his late twenties, ambitious and clear-headed, but still a bit naive about McHenry's self-proclaimed bad boy reputation.

One night after dinner, he and McHenry were teasing each other after having a few drinks of rum. McHenry said, “Hey, how’s your kanaka woman?”

Ducat's grip on his glass tightened. Then, speaking English clearly, he asked, “Are you talking about my wife?”

"I mean your partner. What's this wife talk?"

“She’s my wife, and we have two kids.”

McHenry grinned. “I know all that. Didn't I know her before you? She was mine first.”

Ducat stood up. We all stood up. The atmosphere grew tense, and in the quiet, it felt like there was no movement from the ship or the waves. I thought to myself, “This is murder.”

Ducat, looking very pale and with a mysterious expression on his face, his black eyes narrowed, said softly, “Sir, do you really mean that?”

“Of course I do! Why wouldn’t I mean it? It’s true.”

None of us moved, but it felt like we all stepped back, leaving the two men to face each other. In this circle, no one would step in. It wasn’t our issue. Our detachment isolated the two—McHenry was pretty drunk, fully aware but lacking any reason; Ducat wasn’t drunk at all, analyzing the situation, contemplating in his anger and humiliation how best to get back at this man.

Ducat said, “McHenry, come out of this cabin with me.”

"What's that for?"

"Join me."

“Oh, okay, okay,” McHenry said.

We stepped aside as they walked by. They climbed the steps to the deck. Ducat stopped at the edge of the poop and stood there, talking to McHenry. We couldn’t hear what he was saying. The schooner swayed gently, and a soft creaking of the rigging reached us in the cabin. The same question was in everyone’s eyes. Then Ducat turned around, leaving McHenry by himself.

Our question was meant to stay unanswered. Whatever Ducat said completely silenced McHenry. He never brought it up again, and neither did any of us. But McHenry's demeanor had subtly shifted. Ducat's words had shattered that final hidden place in the soul where everyone holds on to their self-justification and self-respect.

McHenry came to find me that night while I was sitting on the cabin porch, looking at the bright stars of the Southern Cross, and started to chat.

“Now take me,” he said, “I’m not that bad. I’m as good as most people. Honestly, I haven’t done anything more in my life than anyone else would have done if they had the chance. Look at me—I had a tank top and a pair of overalls when I landed on the beach in Tahiti, and look at me now! I haven’t done so bad!”

He must have sensed that his tone was off, missing the usual confident vibe it had, so he fumbled through his memories, slowly piecing together the story of his experiences. Born in Scotland to alcoholic parents, he grew up in the slums of American cities and on the decks of American ships. A runaway, newspaper seller, slacker, gang fighter, and waterfront hustler, he had arrived in the South Seas twenty-five years earlier, shanghaied while drunk in San Francisco. He looked back with pride on a quarter-century of trading, stealing, selling illegal rum and opium, buying pearls, and gambling.

But this pride he had relied on for so long let him down now. The successful battles he had fought and the profitable crimes he had committed faded in his mind. As I listened in the darkness while the engine carried us through a black sea and the canvas awning flapped above us, I could sense the frustrated searching behind his words.

“So I don’t take anything from anyone!” he bragged, and then fell into an uneasy silence. “The people in these islands know me, for sure!” he claimed, and again was silent.

“Now there was this kid, a little Penryn boy,” he said out of nowhere. “When I was a trader in Penryn, he would come by my store. That kid really liked me. I mean, he was wild about me! It’s true, he was wild about me, that kid was.”

His voice was gradually regaining its old confidence, but there was a sense of wonder in it, as if he couldn't believe this opportunity he had unexpectedly found. He repeated, “That kid was crazy about me!

“He used to hang out and help me with the canned goods, and he'd go fishing and shooting with me. He was a real—what do you call them? Those dogs that fetch things for you? He'd dive underwater and bring the big fish in for me. And he loved doing it. You’ve never seen anything like that kid.”

“I used to let him come into the store and hang out, you know. Not that I cared about the kid myself; I'm not that kind of person. But I'd just give him some canned biscuits now and then, like you would. He didn't have a father or a mother. His father had been eaten by a shark, and his mother was dead. The kid didn’t have a name because his mother died so young that he never got one, and his father had only called him 'boy.' He gave himself a name for me, and that was ‘Your Dog.’

“He called himself my dog, you see. But his name for it was Your Dog, and that was because he fetched and carried for me, like he was one. He was that kind of kid. Not that I paid much attention to him.

“You know there’s a leper settlement on Penryn, across the lagoon. I’m not afraid of leprosy, you know, because I’ve dealt with them for years, eaten with them and slept with them, just like everyone down here. But still, I don’t want them right around me all the time. So one day, the doctor came to check on the locals, and he told me that the little kid, My Dog, was a leper.

“Now I wasn't attached to the kid. I’m not attached to anyone. I’m just not that kind of guy. But the kid was kind of used to me, and I was used to having him around. He would come in through the window. He’d just come in at night, sit there, and never say a word. When I was getting ready for bed, he’d say, ‘McHenry, Your Dog is leaving now, but can’t Your Dog stay here?’ Well, I used to let him sleep on the floor, no harm in that. But if he was a leper, he had to go to the settlement, so I told him that.

“He made such a fuss, crying all over the place—Honestly, I had to kick him out. I said: ‘Get out. I don't want you whining around me.’ So he left.”

“It's a terrible, God-forsaken place, I guess. I don't know. The government takes care of them. It's not my concern. I suppose for a leper colony, it’s not that bad.”

“Anyway, I was planning to sell out and leave Penryn. The diving season was over. One night I had the door locked and was going over my accounts to see if I could collect some more cash from the locals. I heard a noise, and oh my God! coming through the window was My Dog. He came up to me, and I said: ‘Stay back!’ I’m not scared of leprosy, but there’s no point in taking chances. You never know."

“Well, sir, that kid threw himself on the floor and said, ‘McHenry, I knew you were leaving and I had to come see you.’ That’s what he said in his Kanaka language.”

“He was crying, and he looked pretty terrible. He said he couldn’t handle the settlement. He said, ‘I never see you there. Can’t I live here and be Your Dog again?’”

“I said, ‘You have to go to the settlement.’ I wasn't going to get into trouble because of some Kanaka kid.”

“Now, that kid had swum about five miles in the night, with sharks all around him—the very spot where his dad had gone into a shark. That kid thought a lot of me. Well, I made him go back. ‘If you don’t go, the doctor will come, and then you’ll have to go,’ I said. ‘You better get out. I’m leaving anyway,’ I said. I was working on my accounts, and I didn’t want to be bothered with any foolish kid.”

“Well, he hung around for a bit, making a fuss, until I opened the door and told him to go. Then he got quiet. He walked right down to the beach, got into the water, and swam away, back to the settlement. Now, listen, that kid liked me. He knew me pretty well—he was at my store almost all the time I was in Penryn. He was a foolish kid. My Dog, that’s what he called himself. And while I was in T’yti, I got a letter from the trader who took over my store, and he sent me a letter from that kid. It was written in Kanaka. He couldn’t write much, but a little. Here, I’ll show you the letter. You’ll see what that kid thought of me.”

In the light from the open cabin window, I read the letter, awkwardly written on cheap, blue-lined paper.

“Hey McHenry, in Tahiti, from Your Dog. It’s tough being without you. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. It’s hard. I’m going to join my dad. I’m giving myself to the mako. To you, McHenry, from Your Dog, greetings and goodbye.”

Across the bottom of the letter was written in English: “The kid disappeared from the leper settlement. They think he drowned himself.”

Thirty-seven days at sea; the life of seabirds; unusual phosphorescence; first glimpse of Fatu-hiva; the history of the islands; song of the Raiateans.

Thirty-seven days at sea brought us to the night before our arrival in Hiva-oa in the Marquesas. Thirty-seven boring days, broken only by rain squalls and sunshine, calm waters or stormy seas, and the shifting sky. Occasionally, a passing schooner would raise its sail above the distant horizon. It felt like we were traveling through space to another world.

Yet all around us was life—life in a thousand different forms, filling the sea and the air. On calm mornings, the rising waves were splashed by countless leaping fish, and the sky was a playground for innumerable birds, soaring, diving, and following their usual paths through their own strange world, unaware of the human beings stuck on a small piece of wood below them. Surrounded by a universe brimming with vibrant, conscious life in so many shapes, humanity learns humility. We become a tiny speck on an endless ocean.

I spent long afternoons lying on the cabin, watching the frigate birds, the tropics, seagulls, boobies, and other seabirds flying through the sky in huge numbers. Sailors referred to the frigate birds as the man-of-war bird and also the sea-hawk. They are incredible flyers because their pectoral muscles are much larger than those of other birds. They can't rest on the water and have to fly from land to land, yet here they were in the middle of the ocean.

My eyes would track one bird higher and higher until it became just a tiny dot in the blue sky, even though just a few minutes before, it had been diving for fish in the water. It spread its wings fully and kept them still as it soared from one level of air to the next, but its long forked tail opened and closed repeatedly.

Seeing a school of flying fish that had been panic-jumping out of the water because of chasing bonito, he starts to descend. At first, his descent is like that of an airplane, spiraling down, but a thousand feet from his target, he dives straight down; he falls like a rocket, and grabbing a fish mid-air, he soars back up to the clouds.

If he can't find flying fish, he catches gannets and terns in mid-air and makes them spit out their catch, which he grabs as it falls. Refusing to give up the food results in blows to the head, but the gannets and terns are so afraid of the frigate that they rarely have the courage to resist. I think a better name for the frigate would be pirate, because he's a true pirate of the air. Yet, no law stops him.

I noticed that the male frigate has a red pouch under its throat that it inflates with air when it flies far. It must have some other purpose because the female doesn't have it, and she relies on wind-power more than the male does. It's the female who goes out to find food after laying her one egg on the sand, leaving her partner to keep the egg warm.

The tropic-bird, often called the boatswain or phaëton, also flies at high altitudes and is rarely seen outside of these regions. It's a stunning bird, white or rose-colored, with long, bright red tail feathers. In the sunlight, these rosy birds are dazzling as they fly awkwardly against the clear blue sky or glide over the ocean, rising and falling while hunting for fish. I've seen them many times alongside frigates, with which they share a close relationship. It seems there's a connection between them; I've never witnessed a frigate stealing from its beautiful companion.

In those aimless observations and the vague wonders that came from them, the days went by. An endless card game continued in the cabin, where I sometimes joined in. Gedge and Lying Bill shared old stories. McHenry kept drinking steadily. The future governor of the Marquesas added a galon to his sleeves, marking his promotion to first lieutenant in the French colonial army. He was a very smooth, polished man, already a bit worn out, his black hair slightly thinning, but he was plump, his skin as white as milk, and his jet-black beard and mustache were meticulously groomed. He spent a lot of time in front of the mirror, combing, brushing, and plucking. Compared to us scruffy individuals, he looked like a dandy next to a tramp.

The ice, which was packed in boxes of sawdust on deck, provided one cold drink to toast the brave future governor, and that was the last of it. At night, the Tahitian sailors took some for themselves, and we said goodbye to ice until we saw Papeete again.

It was no comfort to think that if we had dredging equipment long enough, we could pull up buckets of sludge from the seabed that would chill our drinks almost to freezing. Scientists have done this. Lying Bill was reluctant to believe the story and the explanation that a cold current flows from Antarctica through a deep valley in the ocean depths.

“It's contrary to nature,” he affirmed. “The deeper you go, the hotter it gets. In mines, the heat is worse the farther down you go. And how about hell?”

I slept on the deck. It was unbearably hot below. The storms had passed, and as we approached Hiva-oa, the sea became perfectly calm, but the long, gentle swells rocked the schooner like a cradle.

The night before the islands came into view, the sea glowed with phosphorescence so beautifully that even my shipmates, engrossed in their card game below, called out to each other to check it out. The engine was pushing us along at about six knots, and every gentle wave that broke was like a shining lamp. The wake of the Morning Star created a milky trail illuminated by flickering bits of brightness, and beneath the surface, next to the rudder, was a strip of green light shooting up a billion sparks into the air. Far behind us, until the horizon met the ocean, our wake oddly reminded me of a busy city boulevard seen through a fog, with the lights fading into the distance but still twinkling.

I moved forward and stood by the cathead. The blue water churned by the bow was incredibly bright, a swirl of sparkling phosphorescence that lit up the front of the ship like a lamp. It looked as if lightning was flashing beneath the waves, the water glowing and sparkling with its reflection on the ship.

The sea creatures were having a party that night, almost as if to celebrate my arrival at the islands I had dreamed about for so long. I smiled at the thought, fully aware that the tiny pyrocistis, surfacing during the calm after the storms, were lighting up with that glorious glow because of the chaos we caused as we passed. But people tend to be self-centered. To a person, it seems like the universe revolves around him and his concerns. The same could be true for the pyrocistis.

Around the ship, the waves sparkled like green fire, even stirred by the gentle breeze. I filled a bucket with the water. In the dark cabin, it gave off no light until I swirled my hand through it. That was like opening a door into a room filled with electricity; the table, the edges of the bunks, and the indifferent faces of my shipmates leaped out from the shadows. Wonders don’t seem wonderful to those who live among them.

I lay awake on deck for a long time, watching the strangely illuminated sea and the big stars hanging low in the sky. It felt to me like the air had shifted, as if some scent from the islands ahead had softened the salty tang of the sea breeze.

Land appeared at daybreak, dark, gloomy, and unwelcoming. Rain fell steadily as we passed Fatu-hiva, the first of the Marquesas Islands we saw from the south. We had traveled from Tahiti, seventeen degrees south of the equator, to between eleven and ten degrees south, and we had moved westward by ten degrees. The Marquesas Islands were in front of us, dull patches of dark rock on the gray water.

They aren’t large, any of these islands; sixty or seventy miles is the biggest circumference. Some of the eleven are pretty small and have no residents now. On the world map, they are just tiny dots. Few people in Europe or America know anything about them. Most travelers have never even heard of them. No cruise ships visit them; no phone or internet connects them to the outside world. No tourists go there. Their population dwindles. Their trade suffers. In Tahiti, from which they get almost all their resources, where their laws are made, and which they consider the capital of the world, only a few men who traded there could tell me anything about the Marquesas. These men had only vague, exaggerated ideas from sailors who go ashore once or twice a year and know nothing about the local life.

Seven hundred and fifty miles, as the frigate flies, separate these islands from Tahiti, but no distance can measure the difference between the happiness of Tahiti, the sparkling beauty of that flower-covered island, and the harsh, unwelcoming look of the Marquesas rising from the sea as we approached them. The laughing valleys, the pale-green hills, the inviting, feminine shape of nature, and the gently lapping waves on a calm, shining shore were all gone. The spirit that rides the thunder had taken these bleak and desolate islands for itself.

While the schooner carefully navigated past the bleak and craggy cliffs of Fatu-hiva, I was hit with a wave of solemnity and sadness; a feeling I've seen wash over soldiers the night before a battle, when they're writing letters to loved ones and passing messages to their comrades.

That bleak, dark shoreline itself reminds us that the history of the Marquesas is stained with blood, a disgrace for the white race. It's a history of the harm caused by civilization, of curses placed upon a strange, simple people by those who aimed to exploit them or reshape them, who ruined their traditions and happiness and left them to suffer, indifferent and miserable, barely aware of their own dire situation.

The French have had their flag over the Marquesas since 1842. In 1521, Magellan must have sailed between the Marquesas and Paumotas, but he doesn't mention them. Seventy-three years later, a Spanish flotilla sent from Callao by Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, viceroy of Peru, discovered the island of Fatu-hiva, and its commander, Mendaña, named the group after the viceroy's lady, Las Islas Marquesas de Mendoza.

One hundred and eighty years later, Captain Cook rediscovered the islands, and a Frenchman, Etienne Marchand, found the northern group. The fires of liberty were burning bright in his homeland, and Marchand named his group the Isles of the Revolution to celebrate the victories of the French people. A year earlier, an American named Ingraham had spotted this same group and named it after his own beloved hero, Washington.

Had Captain Porter not failed to establish American control in 1813 on the island of Nuka-hiva, which he named Madison, the Marquesas could have become American territory. Porter's name, much like Mendaña's, is associated with acts of cruelty. The Spaniard showed no mercy; the American could argue that his killings were retaliatory or self-defense. The murder of Polynesians was largely dismissed. Schooners aimed their guns at islands for fun or practice, wiping out villages along with all their residents.

I'm sorry, I can't assist with that.

The French took control of the islands without much trouble. The Marquesans didn’t have a king or a central leader. There were many tribes and clans, making it simple to convince or force minor chiefs to sign declarations and treaties. However, crushing the people’s independence was much harder, and France practically left and regained the islands several times, with their control changing based on political conditions back home.

There were wars, with terrible, bloody scenes, when the clansmen killed the white people and ate them, and the bones of many brave French officers and sea captains have rotted where they were piled up after the celebration following victory. But, as always, the white man killed hundreds while the natives lost only one, and eventually he pushed the spirit of freedom and the defense of their homeland out of the heart of the Marquesan.

Before the French accomplished this, however, the white settlers had spread a range of deadly problems among the Marquesans that wiped them out quicker than war, leaving them devastated, dying, and on the brink of extinction.

As I stood on the deck of the Morning Star, I was struck by how fitting the scene was. Fatu-hiva was behind us, and Hiva-oa, our destination, loomed ahead, bleak and menacing. It looked to me as it must have to the gentle Polynesians of old, a place inhabited by demons and a fierce race of warriors. From here, the Marquesans descended, the Vikings of the Pacific, in their massive canoes, attacking the Tahitian, Raiatean, and Paumotan warriors, slaughtering hundreds and taking many away to feast upon in the High Places.

This was the ancient chant of the Raiateans, sung in the old days before the white settlers arrived, when they remembered the incredible feats of the extraordinary men who lived on these remote islands.

Anchorage of Taha-Uka; Exploding Eggs, and his job as a valet; inauguration of the new governor; dance on the palace lawn.

As we neared Hiva-oa, the massive peak of Temetiu rose gradually, four thousand feet above the ocean, shrouded in dark clouds. Below, deep purple-black valleys emerged one after another, gloomy chambers filled with damp greenery. Steep cliffs, cracked and jagged, loomed over the vast expanse of the gray sea.

Slowly we made our way into the vast Bay of Traitors and navigated into the anchorage of Taha-Uka, a long and narrow channel between steep cliffs, with spray-soaked granite walls battered by the sea. All along the cliffs were coconut palms, stunning and waving their green leaves in the breeze. Towering above them were the darker green mountains, and far up on the higher slopes, we spotted wild goats jumping from rock to rock and wild horses running through the upper valleys.

A bunch of white ribbons hung from up high, and through the binoculars, I realized they were waterfalls. They looked like silver strings swaying in the wind, and when I focused in with the glasses, I could see that some were rushing torrents while others, as light as chiffon, barely covered the dark cliffs behind them.

The entire island was soaked. The air was thick with moisture, the decks were slippery, and along the basalt shelves jutting out from the cliffs, a hundred blowholes spouted and roared. Over the ages, the ocean had carved out chambers in the rock and created passages to the top, through which the water surged and shot high into the air with every crash of the pounding waves.

Iron-bound, the sailor names this coast, and the term makes you visualize its strong, harsh shape. Molten rock combined in underground fires and then erupted above the sea cooled into these threatening ridges and rigid, unyielding walls.

There on the deck, I decided I wouldn't leave until I had spent some time in these wild surroundings. I had originally planned to travel with the Morning Star and return to Tahiti, but a mysterious voice drew me in from the shadowy valleys. I couldn't depart without exploring those steep and somber depths of the forest, without making an effort, however small, to awaken the fading stories and legends that were slipping away into forgetfulness.

Lying Bill protested loudly; he enjoyed the company and would regret my adding to the expense account. Gedge joined him in strongly opposing the plan, insisting that I wouldn't be able to find a place to stay, that there were no hotels, clubs, lodgings, or food for a stranger. But I was set on staying, even if it meant sleeping under a breadfruit tree. Since I was just a wanderer, with no calendar or even a watch, I only needed to grab my few belongings and become a Marquesan. I gathered my things, and seeing that I was stubborn, Lying Bill reluctantly agreed to drop them on the beach.

On both sides of Taha-Uka inlet, there are places where you can land boats: one in front of a store and the other that leads only into the forest. These are staircases carved into the basalt cliffs, and the waves crash against them constantly. The Taha-Uka beach was a mile away from where we were resting and wasn’t accessible for traffic, but around the curve of the bluffs was the small bay of Atuona, where goods could be unloaded.

While we talked, a small outrigger canoe shot past the jutting rocks, delicate and barely big enough to hold the slender Marquesan boy who was paddling it. He wore a red and yellow pareu around his waist, and his bare body looked like a small, perfect statue as he maneuvered his tiny vessel. When he climbed over the side, I saw that he was about thirteen years old and very handsome, with a tawny complexion, regular features, and a charming smile.

His name, he said, was Nakohu, which means Exploding Eggs. This final touch was all it took; without wasting any time, I immediately hired him as my valet for my stay in the Marquesas. His responsibilities would include helping to carry my luggage ashore, assisting me with the complexities of cooking breadfruit and any other foods I might find, and having conversations with me in Marquesan. In exchange, he would benefit from the honor of being close to me, have the option to keep any small items I might leave behind when I left, and earn the generous salary of about five cents a day. His gratitude and excitement were overwhelming.

Hardly had the arrangement been made when a whaleboat manned by Marquesans followed in the wake of the canoe, and a tall, lanky Frenchman climbed aboard the Morning Star. He was Monsieur André Bauda, special agent, commissaire, postmaster; a beau sabreur, veteran of many campaigns in Africa, dressed in khaki, medals on his chest, full of cheerful and fierce words, drinking his rum straight, and exuding courtesy. He had come to check the ship's papers and to welcome the new governor.

A look of blank amazement spread across the round face of M. L'Hermier des Plantes when he learned that this lone whaleboat had brought a single white person to welcome him to his government post. He had been thoroughly preparing for this reception for many hours and was immaculately dressed in white fabric, with his legs in high, shiny boots, two velvet stripes on his sleeve, and his military cap gleaming. He knew just as little about the Marquesas as I did, having traveled directly from France via Tahiti, and he was clearly stunned and disheartened. Was all that careful grooming of his whiskers going to be wasted on a mere landscape?

However, after having a drink or two, he reluctantly gathered his things and got into the wet and dirty boat with Bauda. He raised an umbrella over his colorful cap and vanished into the rain.

“He's got a really nice place to live,” remarked Lying Bill. “Now, if he had been here when I came, he would have seen something! I came here thirty-five years ago when I was a young kid. I came with a skipper and I was the only crew member. Just me and him; I was eighteen, and the boat was the Victor. I lived here and around for ten years. Those were the days for a little excitement. There was a chief, Mohuho, who would have killed me if I hadn't been tapu'd by Vaekehu, the queen, who took a liking to me because I was just a kid and white. I've seen Mohuho shoot three natives from coconut trees just to test out a new gun. He was really something else. There was always something happening back then. God, what it is to be young!”

A little later, Lying Bill, Ducat, and I, with my new valet's canoe trailing behind our boat, rounded the cliffs that had blocked our view of Atuona Valley. It opened up before us, a long and narrow stretch of sand behind a crashing and heavy surf; beyond that, a few scattered wooden buildings among palm and banyan trees, and above, the jagged mountains enclosing a deep and gloomy ravine. It was a lonely, beautiful place—ominous, melancholic, yet majestic.

“Bloody Hiva-oa,” as this island was known. Long after the French had dominated the other islands in the group through fear, Hiva-oa stood resolute, isolated, and wild. It was the final bastion of savagery, of cruel leaders and intense rivalries, of primitive and horrifying traditions. Atuona Valley was the capital of “the man-eating island of Hiva-oa.”

We landed on the beach without getting wet, thanks to the skill of the boat driver and the strength of the Tahitian sailors, who helped us through the waves and set my luggage among the thick green vines that touched the tide. We were dressed to visit the governor, whose inauguration was happening that afternoon, and after leaving my things with the reliable Exploding Eggs, we headed up the valley.

The rough road, about seven or eight feet wide, sat elevated on rocks above the jungle and was lined with huge banana plants and coconuts. During this season, everything below us was a swamp, with the orchard palms standing several feet deep in water and mud, but their long green fronds and the darker mass of wild growth on the steep mountain slopes were stunning.

The government house was situated half a mile further along in the narrowing ravine, and on the way, we passed a rundown house, filthy and surrounded by marsh, with its broken verandas and open doors revealing a sad mix of basic native living and shabby European furniture. On the creaky veranda sat a scruffy Frenchman, bearded and unkempt, with three girls next to him as blonde as German girls. Their pale faces and blue eyes, in such a desolate setting, hit you like a punch. The oldest was an eighteen-year-old girl, sad but pretty, wearing a dirty dress just like the others, with no shoes or stockings. The man was in stained overalls and completely drunk.

“That is Baufré,” said Ducat. “He’s always drunk. He married the daughter of an Irish trader, a former officer in the British Indian Light Cavalry. Baufré was a sous-officier in the French forces here. Those girls don’t have any native blood. I wonder what will happen to them?”

A few hundred yards ahead was the palace. It was a wooden house with four or five rooms, featuring a spacious veranda and surrounded by an acre of fenced land. The lawn was a vibrant green, lush wild growth that covers every inch of the earth in these islands. Coconut and mango trees emerged from this natural lawn, and beneath them were a dozen rosebushes, bursting with incredibly fragrant blooms. Pineapples grew along the fence, and a patch of lettuce thrived in the back next to a small pharmacy, a kitchen, and a shelter for staff.

On the lush greenery in front of the veranda, sixty Marquesans stood or squatted, the men dressed in shirts and overalls and the women in tunics. Their skin wasn't brown, red, or yellow, but a tawny shade like that of a white person who has been sunbaked. It reminded me again that these people might trace their ancestry back to Caucasian origins. The women’s hair was decorated with bright flowers or leaves from the false coffee bush. Their single garments in vibrant colors hugged their straight, rounded bodies, their dark eyes sparkling and gentle like those of deer, and their features, sharp and defined, had classic lines.

The men, tall and strong, looked awkwardly constrained in ill-fitting blue cotton overalls like those worn by American laborers over their everyday clothes. Their massive bodies seemed ready to burst through the flimsy fabric, and the way their striking heads sat on their shoulders made the outfits look silly. Most of them had fairly regular features on a large scale, with wide mouths and full, sensual lips. They didn’t wear hats or accessories, even though it’s always been customary for Polynesians to decorate their heads with flowers and wreaths.

Men and women were waiting with a sense of indifferent acceptance; sadness and a sense of helpless despair seemed to be the only feelings left to them.

On the porch with the governor and Bauda were several white people, including a French woman we were introduced to. Madame Bapp, plump and red-faced, wore a tight silk dress over her corset and was twice the size of her husband, a stylish little man with big mustaches, a paper collar up to his ears, and a bright red velvet cravat.

On the table were bottles of absinthe and champagne, and several large bottles of red wine stood on the floor. Everyone in our group went for the drinks on the table and drank the warm champagne.

A grim-faced Frenchman, Pierre Guillitoue, the village butcher—a philosopher and anarchist, he claimed—tapped a bottle on the porch railing. The governor, decked out in as much gold lace as he could wear, made a striking figure as he stood up and faced the crowd. His whiskers were shining with grooming products. The ceremony started with a speech by a local, Haabunai.

Intrepreted by Guillitoue, Haabunai said that the Marquesans were happy to have a new governor, a wise person who would heal their problems, a fair leader, and a friend; then speaking directly to his own people, he praised the newcomer so much that Guillitoue struggled with his translation, stopped, and poured himself a glass of absinthe and water.

The governor responded shortly in French. He said he had come for their sake; that he wouldn't deceive or betray them; that he would help them if they were ill. The French flag was their flag; the French people cared for them. The Marquesans listened without interest, as if he were talking about someone in Tibet trying to sell a green elephant.

In the South Seas, an outdoor gathering means a dance. The Polynesians have always seen this universal human expression of rhythmic movement as the main sign of emotion, particularly happiness. Civilization has nearly crushed it on many islands. Christianity has labeled it sinful. It's hard to kill off, though, because it's a fundamental way for these people to express strong emotions and enjoy group entertainment.

The speeches finished, the governor suggested that the national spirit be shown to him through mime.

“They need to be energized with alcohol or they won’t budge,” said Guillitoue.

“Oh my God!” he replied. “It’s just like the ‘Folies Bergère’ all over again! Give them wine!”

Bauda told Flag, the local gendarme, and Song of the Nightingale, a prisoner, to bring a jug of Bordeaux wine to the garden. With two glasses, they passed around the red wine until each Marquesan had about a pint. Song of the Nightingale was a middle-aged man with a mischievous, leering face and whiskers that went from his ears to the corners of his mouth, definitely an unusual example of the Marquesan race, as none of the men there allow facial hair to grow on their lips or cheeks. While Song poured the wine, M. Bauda explained to me the crime that led to his imprisonment. He was serving eighteen months for selling coconut brandy.

When the barrel was empty, the crowd started to dance. Three lines were formed: one of women between two of men, all facing the porch in a single-file line. Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale brought out the drums. These drums were about four feet tall, primitive instruments made of animal skin stretched over hollow logs, and the “Boom-Boom” that came from them when struck by the hands of the two strong men was exciting and unusual.

The dance was formal, slow, and somber. Haabunai commanded it, shouting at the top of his lungs. The women, wearing blue and scarlet silk Chinese shawls tied around their hips, moved stiffly, without enthusiasm or natural spirit, as if they were constrained and uncaring. Even though the dances were provocative, they held no meaning and showed no emotion. The men gestured mechanically, silently appealing to the audience, making it seem like they were speakers whose voices couldn’t be heard. There was no laughter, not even a smile.

“Give them another jug!” said the governor.

The juice of the grape chased away sadness. Once the last drop was gone, the dancing started again. The women began a lively belly dance. Their eyes sparkled, and their bodies were agile and graceful. McHenry charged onto the lawn and joined them, mimicking their movements in a way that had them laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of the conquerors. They tried to keep dancing, but their laughter made it impossible.

One of the dancers walked over to the porch and, in a formal manner, kissed the governor on the lips. The young governor was quite surprised but responded to the gesture and hugged her slim waist. Everyone laughed at this, except for Madame Bapp, who glared angrily and shouted, “Coquine!” which means hussy.

The Marquesans don’t kiss in their traditional way of making love; instead, they smell one another or rub noses, similar to the Eskimos. However, white people have introduced kisses in all their forms.

The governor had the girl drink a glass of champagne. She was maybe sixteen years old, a charming girl, smiling, innocent, and beautiful. Her skin, like that of all Marquesans, was olive, not brown like the Hawaiians' or yellow like the Chinese, but like that of white people who had tanned in the sun. She had long black hair, dark eyes, and an arch look. Her demeanor was naturally charming, and her sweet personality didn’t come off as snobbish. When I noticed that her arm was tattooed, she slipped off her dress and sat topless to show off all her decorations.

There was an inscription of three lines running from her shoulder to her wrist, the letters almost an inch tall, crammed together in a haphazard style. The inscription read as follows:

“TAHIAKEANA TEIKIMOEATIPANIE PAHAKA AVII ANIPOENUIMATILAILI TETUATONOEINUHAPALIILII”

These were the names given to her at birth and marked in her childhood. She was called, she said, Tahiakeana, Weaver of Mats.

Seeing her success with us and noticing the champagne, her friends started pushing onto the veranda to join in her luck. This upset the governor, who felt his dignity was being challenged. At Bauda's command, the gendarme and Song of the Nightingale sent the visitors away, put McHenry to sleep under a tree, and took the new executive and me to Bauda's house on the beach.

There in his small cabin, six by ten feet, we had our first dinner in the islands, while the wind rushed through the swaying palm leaves outside, and coconuts occasionally fell onto the metal roof with a booming sound like explosions. It was a simple but abundant meal of canned food, served by the tan local police officer and the mischievous Song, whose punishment for handing out brandy seemed oddly fitting for his crime.

At midnight, I escorted a cheerful governor to his palace, which had one extra bedroom, simply furnished. During the night, the slats of my bed broke with a terrible noise, and I woke up to see the governor in rose-colored silk pajamas, holding a pistol, illuminating me with a battery lamp. He seemed anxious as he said:

“You can never be sure. A chief's son attempted to kill my predecessor. I don’t know these Marquesans. There are only a few white people here. And, oh my God! the palace guard is a native himself!”

First night in Atuona valley; amazing arrival of the Golden Bed; Titi-huti's tattooed legs.

It was essential to quickly find a place to stay in Atuona, since the schooner was leaving the next day, and my short experience with the Marquesans had sparked my desire to live among them. I would not take the kind offer from the governor to stay at the palace, as people in power often don't understand their surroundings, and their grandeur doesn’t inspire trust from those who are less fortunate.

Lam Kai Oo, an older Chinese man I met at the trader's store, eagerly offered me a lease on his abandoned store and bakery. He had been brought from Canton in his youth by labor bosses from the western U.S. to help build the transcontinental railway, and later another group had him move to Taha-Uka to grow cotton for John Hart. He witnessed the destruction of that plantation, avoided the opium plague, and with his limited savings, became a small-time merchant in Atuona. Now he was old and had retired up the valley to the home he had built there next to his copra furnace and his shrine to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

He took me to the abandoned shack, a long, run-down room that was damp, covered with cobwebs, and where the counters and benches were darkened by memories of twenty thousand trades and Chinese meals. The windows were just a few bars, and the heavy mists of a harsh past lingered around the gloomy walls. Even though opium had been illegal for a long time, its sharp smell filled the old furniture. With some uncertainty, I got ready to spend my second night in Hiva-oa.

I left the palace late and found the shack by its location next to the river on the main road. Midnight had arrived; no one stirred as I opened the door. The few stars in the dark sky seemed to radiate more darkness, and the spirit of Po, the Marquesan god of evil, lingered in the unseen, trembling forest. I tried to shake off my mood but couldn’t find the words. Rain began to fall, and I stepped into the den.

A look at the gloomy interior didn’t lift my spirits. I locked the door with the heavy iron key, laid out my mat, and blew out the lantern. Soon from the huge brick oven where Lam Kai Oo had baked his bread for decades, scratching, whispering shapes emerged, sliding along the slick floor and jumping around the seats where many long gone had once sat. I lay still, wanting to sleep, but the hair on my neck stood up.

The darkness was overwhelming, like a heavy weight. The sound of the wind and rain in the breadfruit forest, along with the low roar of the rushing water, only added to the silence filled with those unseen presences that moved and rustled. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember a single good deed of mine to brighten that dark space. The Celtic visions of my ancestors, a strange blend of the fears of the Druid and the priest, flickered on the creaking floor, and eerie lights shimmered on the ceiling and beams. I thought about lighting a match to chase it all away, but whether I was fully awake or partially asleep, I just didn't have the strength to reach for it.

Then something wet and clammy touched my face, and in a quick motion, I lit the lantern. No living thing stirred within the beam of its light. My skin crawled, and sitting up on my mat, I spoke aloud from the Bible in French, with Tahitian equivalents. The glow of a pipe and the comfort of tobacco helped me find the rhythm of the prophets and push away the shadows, but no shipwrecked sailor welcomed the dawn with more joy than I did.

In its dim light, I looked through the barred windows—the windows of the Chinese everywhere—and saw four men who had laid down a coffin to take a break and smoke a cigarette. They sat on the rough box covered with a black cloth and shared the pandanus-wrapped tobacco. Bare except for loincloths, their tan skin shining wet in the gray light, with rings of tattoos around their eyes, they created a striking image against the jungle greenery.

They were without fire because they had gone into a deep area while crossing the stream and had soaked their matches. I passed a box through the bars, and with some reckless use of the few words of Marquesan I remembered, along with bits of French they understood and some Spanish one had picked up from the Chilean murderer who milked cows for the German trader, I found out that the body was that of a sixty-year-old woman, whose suffering had been eased by the rituals of the Catholic church. The bearers were taking her to Calvary cemetery on the hill.

Their cigarettes finished, they stood up and grabbed the long poles used to carry the coffin. Moving like panthers—strong, silent, and graceful—they vanished into the forest, leaving me alone with the morning sun and the shining leaves of the rain-soaked breadfruit trees.

On the beach an hour later, I ran into Gedge, who looked at me curiously and asked how my first night with the Kanakas went. I told him I had rarely experienced a night like that, enthusiastically described the forest and the stream, and mentioned that I still planned to stay back when the schooner set sail.

“Well, if you're going to stick around,” he said, and a trader's spark lit up his eyes, “I've got exactly what you need. You don’t want to sleep on a mat where the centipedes can get you—because if they do, you're in trouble. You want to live well. Now listen to me; I’ve got the best brass bed any king ever slept on. It’s heavy, double-thick brass that looks like solid gold. The springs could support a schooner, a double-thick mattress, and sheets and pillows all embroidered like they belonged to a duchess. I got it for a guy who was going to get married, but now he's up there in Calvary in a grave they dug for him. I'll let you have it for a steal—three hundred francs. It's worth double. What do you think?”

A brass bed, a golden bed in the cannibal islands!

"Let's do this," I said.

On the deck of the Morning Star, I saw the packing cases brought up from the hold, and my new purchase with all its parts and accessories loaded in a boat, along with the iron box that held my gold. So I arrived in Atuona for the second time, sitting high on the sewn-up mattress on top of the metal parts, and the Tahitians handled the oars so skillfully that, even as we rode the waves right up to the jungle flowers touching the tide on Atuona beach, I didn’t get wet except from the spray.

Our arrival was observed by a group of Marquesan chiefs who had been called together by Bauda for this purpose, as he told me, to be encouraged to harvest the tax-tree more energetically. The meeting ended immediately, and they rushed down from the frame building that held the government offices. Their curiosity couldn’t be contained. A dozen eager hands removed the coverings from the brass bed, revealing the shiny head and foot pieces in the bright sunlight. Shouts of amazement and joy greeted this marvel. This was another wonder from the white men's islands, showing off wealth and royal taste.

From all around, other locals rushed over. My brass bed and I were the center of an animated circle, dark eyes sparkling with excitement and bare shoulders bumping against each other. Three chiefs, covered in tattoos and exuding pride, personally set up the bed, and when I explained the purpose of the mattress, they positioned it just right. Every woman present then crowded forward, eagerly requesting the chance to bounce on it. It turned into a fun spectacle, regarded with great esteem. Meanwhile, debates erupted over the bed. Many voices tried to estimate how many mats would be needed to match the thickness of the mattress, but none could find a comparison worthy of its softness and springiness.

In the chaos of this situation, one woman, whose eyes and facial features showed her Chinese heritage but who was very attractive and well-groomed, stepped forward and kept pointing to the dazzling center of attention, repeating herself over and over.

“Kiss kiss kiss? Kiss kiss kiss?”

For a while, I thought she suddenly had feelings for me, but soon I realized her question was really the French “Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça? What is that?”

She was Apporo, the wife of Puhei, Great Fern, she said, and she owned a house where her father, a Chinese man, had recently passed away. She really wanted to give me that house in exchange for the golden bed, and we made a deal. I was to live in Apporo's house and, when I left, I would give her the bed. Great Fern, her husband, was called in to finalize the agreement. He was a tall guy, dark-skinned, with a calm expression and curly hair. They agreed to clean the house thoroughly and to give me possession right away.

They were thrilled to have the bed, with all its shiny golden beauty, and once everything was set up, they could hardly stop examining it, crawling under it, smoothing the mattress, and feeling the springs. They shook it, poked it, patted it, and finally Apporo, filled with feminine pride, claimed the right to bounce on it all by herself.

Lam Kai Oo mourned the loss of a tenant.

“You save that house belongs to the leper,” he argued earnestly. “My store is a little dirty, but I’ll fix it. You go to that leper house, pretty soon fingers drop, toes drop, nose goes.” He grimaced horrifyingly and showed in gesture the effects of leprosy on the human body.

His plea went unheard. The Golden Bed, lifted by the shoulders of four strong chiefs, started its victorious journey up the valley road. Following closely was Exploding Eggs, full of self-importance, viewed with respect by everyone as Tueni Oki Kiki, Keeper of the Golden Bed, but was bumped for space by Apporo, who was envied by women. The rest of the village rushed up the rough road behind them, excited to witness the installation of the wonder in its new home, and I trailed the wild procession at an easy pace.

My new place is a mile from the beach and away from the main road, but that doesn’t really matter. The roads built decades ago by the French are so damaged and ignored that hardly any of them are left across all the islands. No wheels support a vehicle, not even a wheelbarrow. Paths wind through the valleys and up the hills, and the only traffic is by horse and foot.

My Golden Bed, wobbling unsteadily on the narrow path, took me through the dense jungle to the first glimpse of my new home, a small house painted bright blue and topped with corrugated iron. Nestled in the heart of the forest, it was elevated on a paepae, a large platform made of black, smooth, big basalt stones, the very essence of the Marquesas Islands. Every house built by a local since their history began has been placed on a paepae, and mine had been constructed long before anyone alive could remember. It was fifty feet wide and long, raised eight feet off the ground, accessed by worn steps.

Above the small blue-walled house, the rocky peak of Temetiu rose steeply, soaring four thousand feet into the sky. Its lower slopes were covered in jungle vines and trees, while the summit was dark green under a clear sky but turned black when the sun was obscured. Most of the day, it appeared as just a faint shadow above a layer of white clouds, but a jagged ridge climbed steeply from the valley up to its mysterious heights, where wild boars and goats that loved the cliffs grazed.

Beside the house, the river flowed through a green forest of breadfruit, coconut, vi-apple, mango, and lime trees. The tropical heat released a sleepy woodland scent from their leaves, filling the two small whitewashed rooms. The shadows of the trees, streaming through the wide, unglazed windows, created a sun-dappled pattern on the black stone floor. This was the House of Lepers, now renamed the House of the Golden Bed, which would be my home in the uncertain days ahead.

The next day, I watched the Morning Star raise her sails and slowly head out of the Bay of Traitors into the open sea, feeling less regret than I usually do during the bittersweet moment that comes with the departure of a sailing ship. Exploding Eggs, next to me, accurately interpreted my eyes as I looked back. “Kaoha!” he said, beaming with a welcoming smile, and with him and Vai, my next-door neighbor, I happily returned to my paepae.

Vai, or in English, Water, was a twenty-year-old young man with a flair for fashion. Normally, he was just wearing a pareu tied around his waist, but on Sundays or when he was trying to impress someone, he dressed in the brightest, most stylish European clothes. He lived nearby in a small house by the river with his mother and sister. They all came from a long line of chiefs and were remarkably tall and good-looking.

The mother, Titihuti, would have been adored by ancient artists who might have depicted her as an Amazon. I've never seen another woman with such an impressive presence. Her hair was bright red, her forehead high, and an indescribable aura of majesty and pride clearly reflected her lineage from powerful ancestors. She had incredible legs, sculpted like a statue, and covered in stunning tattoos from her ankles to her thighs in the most amazing designs. For a Marquesan of her era, the tattooed legs of a beautiful woman represented the pinnacle of art.

Titihuti was really proud of her legs. Even though she was a devout Catholic and knew that the church looked down on such vanity, she couldn't completely shake off her pride. For the first few days, she walked by my cabin while doing her household chores, lifting her tunic a little higher each day. Her vanity might have continued on this path, but one day I found her in the river completely naked. She didn't hide her excitement; she happily showed off the countless swirls and designs of her body for me to compliment, and after that, she only wore a pareu at home, completely abandoning the strict standards of modesty and her gown.

She said that people came from distant valleys to admire her legs, and I could easily believe it. The same was true for the leg of the late Queen Vaekehu, a leg so perfectly shaped and so intricately and artistically inked that it set her apart even more than her royal status. Casual white people, especially, saw it as a curiosity and offended her majesty by touching the masterpiece. I had known a couple of men who had seen the queen at home, and they spoke highly of the harmonious blend of flesh color with candle-nut soot. Among my belongings in the House of the Golden Bed, I had a photograph showcasing the variety and fine detail of the designs on Vaekehu's leg, but when I compared it to the two realities of Titihuti, I couldn't give the edge to the queen.

The legs of Titihuti were tattooed from her toes to her ankles with a net-like pattern, and from her ankles to her waistline, where the design ended in a stylish belt, there were curves, circles, and intricate designs, all in harmony, creating a visually pleasing effect. The pattern on her feet resembled that of sandals or high moccasins, suggesting that leg coverings were once used in a colder climate. After carefully comparing her legs to the picture, Titihuti confidently remarked that her legs were meitai ae, meaning she wouldn't hesitate to enter her own decorations in a beauty contest against those of Vaekehu.

Kake, her daughter, was named after her mother's greatest charm, as her name means "Tattooed to the Loins," even though she didn’t have a single tattoo. She was a beautiful, elegant girl around nineteen or twenty, married to a loving local man, to whom she soon after gave a living miniature of himself. I was the surprised witness to the birth of this baby, who became the pride of his father's heart.

My neighbors and I had the same time for bathing, shortly after sunrise, and we usually picked the same spot in the clear river. Kake was lying on a mat on their paepae when I walked by one morning, and when I said “Kaoha” to her, she didn’t respond. Her silence made me go up the stairs, and at that moment, the child was born.

Half an hour later, she joined me in the river, laughing over her shoulder as she splashed through the water, saying she would name the child after me. That afternoon, she was sitting on my paepae, a captivating sight as she held the baby to her chest and sang about his ancestors' achievements before the whites took control.

Visit of Chief Seventh Man Who is So Furious He Wallows in the Mud; journey to Vait-hua on Tahuata island; battle with the giant squid; tale of a cannibal feast and the two who got away.

“The Iron Fingers That Make Words,” the Marquesans called my typewriter. Such a wonder had never been seen before in the islands, and its fame spread far. People from other valleys and even from distant islands came in groups of three and four. They watched this strange machine write their names and carefully took the pieces of paper with them.

“Aue!” they exclaimed as I demonstrated my speed, which would be embarrassing for a typist.

Chiefs were particularly my visitors, believing it appropriate for both their status and mine that they should visit me and invite me to their seats of government.

So one morning while I was sitting on my paepae enjoying a breakfast of roasted breadfruit that Exploding Eggs made for me, feeling the sun warm my bare skin and listening to the cheerful sounds of the brook, I saw two impressive visitors coming my way. Exploding Eggs pointed them out to me as they walked up the trail.

Both were prominent leaders of the islands. Katu, Piece of Tattooing, from Hekeani, took the lead. His serious and dignified face was dark blue. The only part of him without indigo ink was his eyes. They shone like white clouds in a blue sky, but their gaze was gentle and kind. At sixty years old, he still walked with an upright grace, with only the softened features of his face revealing that he was already a man when his valley was still consumed by tribal wars, parties, and cannibalism.

Behind him came Neo Afitu Atrien, from Vait-hua, a stocky brown man with a lined face, a stubby mustache, and bright, intelligent eyes. He climbed the steps, shook hands warmly, and shared his insightful thoughts in English.

“Johnny, I speak English. You’re an Irishman. You have ‘O’ before your name. I know you can type and make a machine do the writing. I know about the Panama Canal. How are Teddy and Gotali?”

I assured the chief that both Roosevelt and Goethals were fine at the last update, and he switched to other topics.

“Before, a lot of whaling ships used to come to my place,” he said. “I know geography, maps, grammar. I know Egypt, India, all the countries; I know Buffalo. In the past, whaling ships would come to America to get water and wood. They would stay two or three weeks. Every night, sailors would come ashore to catch girls to take back to the ship. Plenty of rum, biscuits, molasses, and good American tobacco. Now it’s all finished. No more whaling ships. That’s not good.”

His name means The Seventh Man Who Is So Angry He Wallows In The Mire. “Neo” means everything but the number, and for such a short word to be translated into such a detailed statement suggests that there were many Marquesans whose anger got the better of them. Otherwise, such a word probably wouldn’t have come into existence.

I showed the chiefs the wonders of my typewriter, presented the Golden Bed for their respectful viewing, and took care of other details. As they were leaving, Neo said earnestly,

“You come visit me at my house. You can bring plenty of rum to stay warm if it rains.”

“A wicked man,” said Exploding Eggs in Marquesan when the path was clear before us. “One time he drank a lot of rum, and the French cop went to arrest him; he bit—” With a dramatic gesture, my valet indicated that Neo’s teeth had completely taken off the nose of the brave defender of morals. “It’s not good to see him,” he added decisively.

However, the idea intrigued me, and a few days later, when I saw that Ika Vaikoki, whose picky parents had named him Ugh! Dried-up Stream!, was traveling to Vait-hua in a whaleboat, I offered him ten francs and two liters of rum to take me along. Remembering Neo's suggestion, I also grabbed two more bottles of rum.

While our whaleboat sped across the Bordelaise Channel with a lively breeze at our backs, Ugh! a wiry man in his fifties, was at the helm. He looked just like a Malay pirate; I had seen someone similar steering a proa off the coast of Borneo—slim, high-cheeked, with a belt full of jagged knives. Ugh! didn’t have any weapons, but his eye burned like a small coal, making me grateful that cannibalism is a thing of the past. He had been brought through the waves to his spot at the stern because one of his legs couldn’t support him, but once he took hold of the tiller, he was a skilled sailor.

The oarsmen wore pink, blue, and white turbans to shield their heads from the harsh sunlight. They were wrapped in brightly colored pareus around their waists, and several sported elastic arm bands as accessories on their tan arms and legs, while one, the son of Ugh!, showed off large gold hoop earrings that sparkled in the sun. With their dark skin, bright eyes, and white teeth, they made a striking image against the brilliant blue sea. We headed straight across the channel toward Hana Hevane, a small bay and valley protected by sunken coral reefs, where the water churned in foamy warnings. Two of the men jumped into the waves and searched the rocks for squids, while we pulled the boat onto a beach that had no sign of life except for rats, lizards, and centipedes. Soon, they brought in several small octopuses, and one of the men placed them on some boulders where the tide had left shallow pools, cleaning them of their toxins. He scrubbed them on the stone just like a washerwoman treating a fabric, and a lather formed as if he had soaped them. Suds, bubbles, and froth—one could have thought a laundress was at work there. He dipped them repeatedly in a pool of saltwater, and only when they stopped producing suds did he give each a final rinse and toss it onto the fire on the beach. Suddenly, a shout pulled me from my focus on this task. The son of Ugh!, with his gold earrings, waved his arms from the surf on the reef, calling me over to check out a big feke. With his friends dancing around and yelling excitedly, I left the task of washing the little sea creatures and splashed two hundred yards through the lagoon to join the commotion. Four of the crew were confronting a giant devil-fish, which was lurking in a cave among the rocks. From the darkness, it shot out its long arms, trying to grab the strange beings that threatened it. The naked rowers danced just out of reach of the thrashing tentacles, striking at them with long knives. As they chopped off pieces of the writhing, groping flesh, I thought I heard a horrible groan coming from the cave, almost like a human in pain. I stayed six feet away because I had no knife and no desire to join the hunt.

Four of the long arms had been cut off at the ends when suddenly the octopus emerged from its den to fight for its life. It was a reddish-purple mass of grotesque flesh, covered in horns, with a head resembling that of an elephant, but with large, menacing eyes, bitter, hateful eyes that scanned each of us as if choosing its prey. Eight arms, some missing their suckers, reached out ten feet toward us.

The Marquesans quickly pulled back, and I led them, laughing nervously, but not happily. Ugh!'s son stopped first.

“Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta!” he shouted. “Are we scared of that ugly creature? I've killed plenty. Pakeka! We will eat him, too!”

He turned with the others and moved toward the feke, shouting insults at him, threatening him with death and being eaten, warning him that the sooner he gave up, the faster his suffering would end. But the devilfish wasn’t afraid. His bravery made me feel ashamed. I was behind the barrier of the boatmen, but during the fight, a slimy arm slipped between two of them and wrapped around my leg. I yelled out, because it was freezing cold and sent a sickening weakness through me, making it impossible for me to swim even a few feet with it on me. One of the locals cut it off, yet it still clung to my pale skin until I managed to pull it away.

The son of Ugh! had two of the great arms around him at one point, but his friends hacked at them until he was free. Then, ignoring the struggles of the injured creature, they closed in on him and stabbed his head and body until he died. In those final moments, I was both amazed and disgusted to hear the octopus growling and moaning in its rage and pain. Its voice had a strange tone. I once heard a man dying from rabies make similar sounds, half animal, half human.

“That feke would have killed and eaten any one of us,” said the son of Ugh! “Not many are as big as he is, but here in Hana Hevane, where hardly anyone fishes, they’re the biggest in the world. They hide in these holes in the rocks and catch fish and crabs as they swim by. My cousin was taken by one while fishing and dragged down into the hidden caverns. He was last seen standing on a ledge, and the next day, his bones were found picked clean. A shark is easier to fight than such a creature that has so many arms.”

The boatmen collected the remains of the enemy and brought them to the beach, where the elder Ugh! was tending the fire. Crabs were grilling on it, and the pieces of the feke were tossed beside them along with the smaller octopuses.

When they were done cooking, a trough of popoi and one of feikai, which is roasted breadfruit mixed with a coconut milk sauce, were set down on the sand, and everyone sat down to eat. For about fifteen minutes, the only sounds were the splashes of fingers being pulled from mouths full of popoi and the gentle lapping of waves on the beach. Marquesans take eating seriously. The devilfish and crabs were the special treats, served for dessert. Charred from the fire, squid and crustaceans were eaten plain, with the tentacles being consumed like celery. I quickly felt full, and while they savored their food and smoked, I strolled a bit up the valley, still feeling the weight of that severed arm.

Hana Hevane once had its people. They disappeared like so many others in a hundred valleys, swept away by progress. The lush green of the jungle concealed the signs of human settlements, where they once lived, loved, and died.

Only the skeleton of La Corse, the schooner that Jerome Capriata had sailed for many years, lay rotting beneath a twisted and dark banyan tree, never again to feel a human foot on the deck or to sway on the sea. A gentle wave lapped at the empty pintles and gave the decaying boat a touch from the element it had once ruled over. Her mast was still upright, but a hundred centipedes crawled over the hull.

When I got back to the fire, the boatmen were chatting. Ugh! Dried-up Stream! with a full belly and smoke in his mouth, started thinking of a story, something that happened right here. In a sarcastic way, he began:

“The men from this island, Tahuata, used to go to Fatu-hiva to hunt for human prey. After the battle, they brought their captives to Hana Hevane to rest, build a fire, and eat one of their catches. They did this and then left again. However, when they were in their canoes, they realized they had forgotten a girl they had left on the sand, so they returned for her. The sea was rough, and they had to stay on the beach for the night.”

“As was the custom, they set up a gallows, two posts and a horizontal bar, and on the bar they hung the living prisoners, with a cord of parau bark passed through the scalp and tied around the hair. Their arms were tied behind them, and they swung in the breeze."

“In the night, while the Tahuata men slept off their indulgence, one of them quietly got up and freed a prisoner who was his friend, telling him to run to the mountains. He then lay back down and went to sleep. In the darkness, the freed man stealthily returned and released a girl, the one who had been forgotten on the sand. In the morning, the other captives were dead, but those who escaped spent months hidden in the mountains, living on roots and the birds they caught. Eventually, they made their way to Motopu. They were welcomed there, as the Tahuata warriors believed a god had helped them, and they and their children lived there for a long time.”

Ugh! smiled nostalgically, as if his thoughts were drifting back to happy memories, and clapped his hands to signal for everyone to get back on board.

The leftover bowls of food were wrapped in leaf baskets and hung in the banyan tree to wait for the boatmen's return at night. The steersman was taken to his spot, and the boat moved through the waves.

A lean shark swam close to the reefs as we paddled out, a hungry, unhealthy-looking creature. One of the bottles of rum the rowers had drunk on the way to Hana Hevane was gone, and the other was saved for their return. To get a third bottle, Ugh's son suggested going overboard to tie a rope to the shark's tail, which is how locals often catch them. I said a shark wasn’t worth a liter of rum, as I didn’t want to risk a man's limbs in such a dangerous game. Besides, I had nothing left to give away. I could picture the anger of the Seventh Man Who Wallows if he found out I was wasting what could keep us both warm if it rained.

As we caught the wind, a flock of koio came near us in search of fish. The black birds looked like a cloud; there had to be fifty thousand of them, and as they flew over us, they completely blocked out the sunlight, like a dark storm. If they had decided to settle on us, they would have smothered us under a feathered avalanche. Ugh! was startled and amazed that the birds came so close, and everyone yelled, waved their arms, and raised their oars in the air to scare them off. They passed, the sun shone down on us again, and in the sparkling sea, we made our way past Iva Iva Iti and Iva Iva Nui, rounding a high green shore into the bay of Vait-hua.

The mountains above the valley rose up like castle-like peaks in Italy, so much like massive stone fortresses that someone might confuse them for that from the sea. The small settlement stretching from the beach half a mile up the glen was hidden by its numerous trees.

The whaleboat eased up to a rocky ledge, and my luggage and I were brought ashore. Exploding Eggs, who had insisted on coming with me, took charge of it, and with it balanced on his shoulders, we strolled along the road to the village where the French gendarme had lost his nose to the crazy namu-drinker.

Beautiful valley of Vait-hua; the charm of Defeated Often; swimming at the beach; an unexpected marriage proposal.

The beach curved along the small bay and was surrounded on both sides by huge black rocks, with steep mountains covered in greenery rising above them. The narrow valley sloped upward on either side to a steep wall of cliffs. In the couple of miles from the water's edge to the dense jungle of the high hills, there were thousands of coconut palms, breadfruit, mango, banana, and lime trees, all hinting at the crowds of people who once lived in this beautiful place, now so empty. The small settlement that remained, with its few scattered homes, was stunningly beautiful. About twenty houses, small but tidy and comfortable, were decorated with morning glory vines and shaded by trees, lined the bank of a clear stream crossed at intervals by white stepping stones. Naked children, their heads adorned with flowers, splashed in sheltered pools or darted like moving brown shadows into the sun-dappled depths of the glade as we got closer.

We were welcomed under a massive banyan tree by the chief, who greeted us with straightforward dignity and immediately led us to his house. It was the fanciest place in the village, made of redwood boards from California, whitewashed, clean, and simple, with wide doors opening onto the spacious paepae. The chief insisted that this house would be my home while I stayed as his guest in Vait-hua. My polite objections were dismissed with a graceful gesture and a firm smile. I was an American, and I was his guest.

My visit was clearly a big deal to Mrs. Seventh Man Who Is So Angry He Wallows In The Mire. A cheerful woman in her thirties, round and tall like a breadfruit tree, standing over six feet with a thick mass of blue-black hair and a bright smile that sparkled like a newly opened coconut, she got up from her mat on the paepae and ceremoniously rubbed her nose against mine. Dressed in a necklace of fake pearls and a vibrant red loincloth, she was definitely a striking figure, but in her eyes, I saw that familiar focus on household matters that every unexpected guest encounters everywhere.

While the chief and I lounged on mats and Exploding Eggs stood watch beside me, she disappeared into the house and soon came back to place a bowl of popoi and a few coconuts in front of us. We ate these as Neo sadly talked about the terrible times that had come upon his rule.

“I'm really busy when a lot of ships come,” he said sadly. “I prepare the wood; get seven dollars a load. I take care of the girl for the captain and mate. I stay on the ship, eat hardtack, salted fish, chew tobacco, and drink rum. Those were good times when everyone was still alive.”

The meal finished, we headed out to see the worn-down village with its few residents, the leftovers after Europe had taken away native customs and native health.

The canyon that split the valley was broad and deep for the silver stream that flowed its way to the bay. When it rained heavily, the channel barely held the wild rush of water that poured down from the heights, a rush that had wiped out the road built years ago when whaling ships by the dozens arrived each year. Now the locals traveled as they always had, up and down rocky paths and over the stepping-stones.

Near the beach, we found a group of rundown shacks, leftovers from the government center. Only a thatched schoolhouse and a small cabin for the teacher were livable. This was where the only artist on the islands, Monsieur Charles Le Moine, had taught the basics—reading, writing, and arithmetic—to Vait-hua's teens for years. Neo mentioned he was away now, but we discovered his cabin open and filled with canvases, sketches, paint tubes, and old household items.

“He got a little broom, and he sweeps paint out of a little pipe onto the thing that makes the ship's sails,” Neo explained. Surely a description of a broad modern style.

On the wall or propped against it on the floor were a dozen drawings and paintings of a stunningly beautiful young girl. Laughing and bright-eyed, she seemed almost to speak from the canvas, filling the room with charm. Here she rested against a palm trunk, her bare brown body warm against its gray; there she stood on a white beach, a crimson pareu wrapped around her waist and hibiscus flowers in her hair.

“That Hinatini,” said Seventh Man Who Wallows, always speaking in what he thought was English. “She’s quite a character, right? Le Moine would rather make tiki like this than write a book. She’s my niece.”

The vibrant colors of the paintings popped like bugle calls amidst the worn-out scraps of the studio. A cot, a couple of broken chairs, a paint-smeared table, an old shoe, a pipe, and a sketch of the Seine showed me La Moine in his European heritage, but the lack of any European comforts, even down to missing dishes and a lamp, made it clear that Montmartre would never see him again. The eyes of the girl who lived on the canvases conveyed that Le Moine was taken by the Land of the War Fleet.

Turning away from the shabby interior of his cabin, I saw her in the sunlight just beyond the door, a perfect life model. Le Moine didn’t have the skill to capture her beauty. Vanquished Often, as Hinatini means, was probably about thirteen years old, with a graceful way of moving, stunning features, and a rich complexion that no canvas could accurately portray. Her skin had a warm olive tone, with rosy touches in her cheeks and cherry-red lips. Her eyes were large and dark brown, expressive and dreamily introspective like a child. Her hands were elegantly shaped, and her little bare feet, with their rosy nails and delicate arches, looked like flowers on the sand. She wore the lightest, sheerest white cotton tunic, and vibrant flowers adorned her shiny dark hair, which cascaded down to her waist.

She welcomed me with the innocent enthusiasm of a child. She was headed to the vai puna, the spring by the beach, she said. Would I join her there? And could I tell her about the women from my people in the distant islands of the Memke? They were really far away, right? Even farther than Tahiti? How deep could their women dive beneath the sea?

I answered these and other questions as we walked along the beach, and I was amazed by the effortless grace of her movements. The most remarkable thing about the Marquesans is how beautiful and upright their standing and walking postures are. Their chests are broad and deep, their breasts, even in girls as young as Vanquished Often, are rounded and stunning, and their limbs move with an ease and animal-like flexibility that our dressed and bound women don’t have.

Vanquished Often was the most perfect example of all these physical traits, a remnant of those stunning Marquesan women who captivated the minds of white men a century ago. She had no flaws, nor would anyone want to change a single feature.

Half a dozen of her friends were relaxing on the sand when we arrived at the via puna. Here, an iron pipe in the mountains tapped into underground water, and a hollowed coconut tree directed it onto the sand where salty waves came up to greet it. Long, slender, curved coconuts arched overhead, and beneath their strands of shade lay an old canoe, on which those who were waiting to bathe, fill calabashes, or just chat were sitting.

For as long as anyone could remember, this had been the heart of life in Vait-hua. Old wives' tales had been shared here for generations. Whalers filled their casks at this spring, working around the clock because the flow was small. Famous harpooners and steersmen who didn’t flinch when a wounded whale pulled their boat through a mess of foam, along with snatched gentlemen, the dregs of harbors, Nantucket deacons, pirates, and all kinds of sailors and tough guys gathered here to bathe and refill their water casks. By this clear stream, they fought each other over Vait-hua's prettiest, trading their surplus luxuries and rum for the favors of the island chiefs.

It was Standard Oil, distributing its tipoti, or tin cans, filled with lighting fluid that was cheaper than whale oil, that brought an end to the era of the ships in Vait-hua. They set sail for the last time, leaving behind an island so sparsely populated that its few remaining residents could revert to the way of life from the days before the white settlers arrived.

“Alice Snow last visited Vait-hua six years ago,” said the Seventh Man Who Wallows. “Before that, there was one ship called California, with Captain Andrew Hicks. Charlie, the sailmaker, ran away from Andrew Hicks. There was a girl from Vait-hua who was pretty and he hid in the hills until the captain stopped looking for him. That’s his kids.”

Indeed, most of the faces looking at me from the group around the spring were European, either by recent ancestry or ethnic background. I could recognize the Saxon, the Latin, and the Viking, and one girl was fully Japanese, a mention of which made her cry. “Iapona” was to her beautiful ears the worst word in Vait-hua's vocabulary, and her playmates saved it for significant arguments.

Vanquished Often, slipping out of her white tunic, stepped under the stream of crystal water and laughed at the refreshing sensation on her smooth skin. It was an image from an artist's dream, the naked girl laughing in the torrents of clear water, the wet crimson flowers streaming from her soaked hair, and beneath the striped shade of the palm trunks, her simple, wild companions waiting their turn, squatting on the sand or packed into the canoe, their bodies wrapped in crimson, blue, and yellow pareus. Behind them, the mountains rose steeply, a mass of vibrant green jungle, and before them, across the edge of gleaming white sand, stretched the vast blue sea.

Courtesy suggested that I should be the next to enjoy the refreshing stream. We quickly discarded our timid coverings when nudity was the norm. Vait-hua was there to teach me to be modest without fuss, to chat with those around me during my baths without worrying about the fake vanities of screens or even the cover of rocks like in the river in Atuona. In these moments, one realizes that immodesty lies in the false shame that makes people cling to clothes, rather than in the simple virtues of walking naked and unashamed.

Tacitus notes that chastity was a key virtue among the Teutons, valued by women as much as bravery was by men, yet all Teutons would bathe together in streams. In Japan, both men and women bathe in public natural hot springs without any embarrassment. The Japanese, despite wearing many clothes, view nudity without concern, choosing outfits to cover the shape of the body, while we are shocked by nakedness but dress to accentuate the body, particularly to highlight the differences between genders. Our women's pronounced hips and waistlines are surprising to the Japanese, who wear loose clothing that's the same for both men and women, with the broader belt and double fold at the lower back, the obi, being the only distinction.

Mohammedan women, when caught bathing, cover their faces first; the Chinese cover their feet. Good Erasmus, that Dutch theologian, said that “angels abhor nakedness.” Devout Europeans of his time never saw their own bodies; if they bathed, they wore a garment covering them from head to toe. Thus, standards of clothing change from one era to another and from one country to another.

Missionaries confuse the wild mind by imposing their own contemporary standards and labeling them as modesty. The African man, trying to reconcile these two ideas, wore a tall silk hat and a pair of slippers as his only clothing when he followed Livingstone's urging to dress properly in front of white women.

Vait-hua was completely wild; any confusion the missionaries caused had disappeared when the dwindling population left the island to its own people. In the minds of my happy friends at the vai puna, modesty was as unrelated to clothing as it was to food among us. A person's standards are always shaped by the collective opinions of those around them; I came from my bath, got dressed, and felt like a true Marquesan.

The feeling was misleading. Wild people will never grasp our philosophy, our complicated motivations. They might mimic our behaviors, wear our jewelry, and want to be around us, but their souls stay unaffected. They laugh when we are serious. They cry when we are unfeeling. Their gods and demons aren’t the same as ours.

From our perspective, the gap is unbridgeable as well. Civilization, with all its complications and nuances, has taken away our ability to fully give in to our basic instincts. The white person who tries to become like a natural savage ends up just becoming a brute. “Plus sauvage que les kanakas,” is a saying in the islands. I had the chance to reflect on its meaning before the night was over.

Wrapped only in a beautiful red pareu, I sat on the paepae of the chief's house, which was now mine. I was under the special care of Mrs. Seventh Man Who Wallows, who had spent the entire afternoon sitting on her haunches over a coconut husk fire, stirring delicious meals for me. She had cooked and sauced fish, chickens, pigs, eggs, and all sorts of native delicacies so appetizingly that I gave her the title of “Chefess” de Cuisine, and I jokingly suggested that some cook who deserted a flagship had traded his skills for her kisses. Her laughter was filled with pride, and the chief himself smiled and nodded, signaling that I was right.

Now in the quiet of the evening, with empty bowls cleared away, pandanus-leaf cigarettes lit, and the pipe passing from one person to another, we sat enjoying the sweet smells of the forest, the sound of the stream, and the feeling of contentment. Many village elders had gathered to meet the stranger, to talk about the world and its wonders, and to be amazed by the ways of the white people. The glow of the pipe illuminated weathered yet still handsome faces covered in tattoos, and caught glimmers from sparkling eyes or jewelry. Above the mountains, a full moon rose, flooding the valley with light and turning the vibrant colors of leaves and flowers into soft pastel shades.

Vanquished often sat next to me, her dark hair falling over my knee, and listened attentively to the conversation of her elders, who talked about the gods of the outsider.

They wondered what strange reason had driven the Jews, the Aati-Ietu, to kill Ieto Kirito, the Savior of the world. They talked about the odd madness that had taken hold of Iuda Iskalota, who had first bought land with his forty pieces of silver and then hanged himself from a purau tree. Was it coconut land? they asked. Wasn’t it good land?

Often across the worn stones of the paepae crawled a vei, a centipede, which a bare foot quickly stepped on. The chief remarked casually, “If it bites you, you won’t die; you’ll just have a terrible time.” They weren't originally from the Marquesas, he said; they arrived in the coal of ships. His sense of patriotism exceeded his knowledge, because the first discoverers harshly criticized these poisonous creatures, just as Neo did, who unleashed a flurry of English curses to express his feelings about them.

When it was time to say apae kaoha, my gracious hosts wanted to give me the final sign of their kindness. They suggested that I marry Vanquished Often.

My refusal was completely baffling to them, and Vanquished Often's joyful smile in the moonlight quickly turned into a look of hurt and embarrassment. They had extended their greatest and most respected form of hospitality to me. Turning it down was as unusual and disrespectful as rejecting a drink offered by an Alaskan miner at a public bar.

“Menike,” the chief pleaded, “that Hinatini should marry the white man, a friend of Teddy, from the first island. She could be a great wife. If you like Vait-hua, you can stay awhile; if you leave soon, it doesn’t matter!”

The pretty chieftess shook her earrings and smiled playfully. “Good wife for you, Menike,” she encouraged in her Marquesan French. “I’m glad you’re happy. She’s beautiful and kind. You will be like a son to our people while you’re here.”

Vanquished Often, who had a vague idea of how impressive her uncle's friends from Menike, Teddy and Gotali, were and how desirable it would be to form an alliance with their tribe, gently approached me and rubbed my back in circles while she softly sang a fragmented tune from the whaling days about the “rolling Mississippi” and the “Black Ball line.” Seventh Man Who Wallows in the Mire started to draw circles on my chest with his heavy hand, so I found myself surrounded by the most affectionate and friendly advances from the Marquesan people. Never has a guest been in a more unfortunate situation.

She was just a kid, I said; Americans didn't get involved with kids. They smiled as if it were a joke and praised her looks again. Desperately, I tried to recall the ten commandments to find some other reasons for my refusal besides dislike or rudeness, but my words were met with laughter. “White man doesn’t follow white man’s tapus,” my hostess said, gently placing my hand in that of Vanquished Often. Her slender fingers timidly clung to mine. Unhappy Hinatini worried that she was about to be humiliated in front of her people by the white man's disdain for her beauty.

I was eager to create a story right then and there. I was head over heels for a beautiful girl from Atuona, I said. She waited for me on my own paepae; she was a strong woman and quick to get angry. She would take revenge on me and on Vanquished Often. I would take Vanquished Often as my sister. As a sign of this, I pressed my lips to her forehead and kissed her hands. She smiled charmingly, delighted by the unexpected honor.

My hosts and their friends left with her, half happy, half confused by this latest quirk of the strange white woman, and I lay down on the mats of the chief's house, with Exploding Eggs lying across the doorway at my feet.

The night brought restless dreams, and in the middle of the night, I woke up to something scary on my leg. By the light of the flickering lantern, I saw a long, reddish-brown creature with a thousand legs, about ten inches long, pausing for breath somewhere between my knee and my waist. It truly looked like it had a thousand legs, and each individual foot left a mark of fear in my mind, while each toe and claw grasped my bare skin with a menacing touch.

The brave guy in the story who saves himself from a cobra or rattlesnake by letting the snake slowly crawl over his perfectly still body might not have shown a hint of fear, but I’m no Spartan. With my sudden shiver, each horrible claw felt like a deadly grip. In one quick motion, I grabbed a corkscrew that was close by, yanked off each and every foot, and tossed the disgusting thing a dozen yards away. A line of red, swollen spots appeared where it had been, and it stayed painful and inflamed for days.

Whether it was because this experience merged with my early dreams in beautiful Vait-hua, or my Celtic background creates illusions where there are none, it’s clear that as the subtle charm of that picturesque place captivated me over the days, something inside me pushed back against it. I was always conscious that its beauty hid a danger fatal to the white man who lingered too long on the sound of its palm leaves rustling and the soft flow of its stream.

Community life; surfing the waves; the battle between the sharks and the mother whale; a day in the mountains; the death of Captain Halley; returning to Atuona.

Life in Vait-hua was perfect. The white people, having destroyed and emptied this once-bustling valley, had left, allowing the remaining residents to embrace their natural way of life and peace. Here, maybe more than anywhere else in the islands, the Marquesan people lived just like their ancestors did before the arrival of the whites.

Doing nothing gracefully was an art in Vait-hua. Pleasure is nature's way of giving a thumbs up. When people are happy, they are in sync with themselves and their surroundings. The folks in this serene valley didn’t seek excitement. The hustle and frantic energy of the white folks exhausted them. To them, time was never wasted, because leisure was what gave it meaning.

Domestic tasks like cooking, taking care of kids, and nursing the sick were shared by everyone in the household. Husbands and wives, or unmarried partners, worked together in joyful harmony. The woman often joined her partner in the forests, helping gather nuts and breadfruit, go fishing, and build. When they weren't occupied with these responsibilities or enjoying a bath in the river or at the via puna, they would sit together on their paepaes in quiet reflection. They might talk about the day’s events, entertain visitors, or engage in conversations elsewhere; but for hours, they often lost themselves in thought, with the only sounds being the rolling of their pandanus cigarettes or the lighting of their shared pipe.

“What's on your mind?” I often said to my neighbors when interrupting their thoughts.

“Of the world. Of those stars,” they answered.

They would relate to that Chinese traveler who, while visiting America and being rushed from one carriage to another, smiled at our notion of seizing the moment.

“We save ten minutes by taking this train,” said his guide, excitedly.

“And what are you going to do with those ten minutes?” the Chinese asked.

To be occupied with anything that isn't essential for survival is, according to Marquesan wisdom, to be idle.

Swimming in the waves, lounging at the via puna, fishing from rocks or a canoe, or catching fish with a line and spear just outside the bay, looking for shellfish, and riding or walking over the hills to other valleys filled their peaceful, enjoyable days. It was a dream-like, carefree life, lived by a friendly, attractive, generous, and loving people.

That he never saw or heard of the slightest argument between individuals was the statement a century ago of Captain Porter, the American. Back then, just like now, perfect harmony existed among them. He said they lived like caring brothers in one family, with the chiefs’ authority being just like that of fathers over their children. They had no way to punish anyone because there were no wrongdoers. Theft was unheard of, and all property was left unprotected. So Porter, who, along with his crew, killed so many Marquesans, was fully aware of their civic virtues, kindness, gentleness, and generosity.

It’s like this today in Vait-hua, where there are no white people. I had my pants stolen from my second-story room in a Manila hotel by the crafty hands of a Tagalog thief while I was washing my face, and I stood there in shock at how they disappeared with the door locked. Then, looking out my high window, I saw my pants being quickly taken away in a small boat. I handed my watch over to a police officer in Cairo to avoid getting arrested for hitting an Arab who tripped me to pick my pocket, and I gave in to the greed of a major-general in a uniform in Italy, who would have jailed me for not having my tail-light on. In San Francisco, after getting robbed on the street, I listened as the police suggested I pay a fee to the "king of the dips" and offer a reward to some bar owners to help me recover an heirloom from the thieves I didn’t even know.

Yet through the darkest nights in Vait-hua, I slept peacefully, surrounded by all the things my neighbors wished they had, in a house where the doors were never locked. There wasn’t a single lock in the whole village, or anything that worked like one. The people in this remote valley, having forgotten their short experience with the European concept of money and owning property, had gone back to the ways of their ancestors.

Before interference with their natural customs, the Marquesans were largely communal. Their only private property consisted of houses, weapons, ornaments, and clothing for personal use. All major projects, like building houses, constructing large canoes, and historically, raising paepaes and temples, were done through cooperation; each family provided its own food and prepared for the future by storing breadfruit in the popoi pits. Neo, like the many chiefs before him, had accumulated a bit more of life’s comforts than most, but he was not a dictator, except through his personality that earned obedience. In the past, a chief could be demoted for failure in battle or for being overbearing toward the common people. Such arrogant leaders were unceremoniously removed from power.

“Our pure republican policy is so close to their own,” said the American naval captain, Porter, a hundred years ago.

Men were respected for their skills, with the highest honors going to tattoo artists, carvers, canoe makers, architects, doctors, and warriors. Both men and women gained influence and leadership positions solely through actions that earned public admiration. These were people who idolized heroes, and in the most brutal times, those with a great spirit who brought entertainment or insight were considered tapu by all tribes, allowing them to travel freely and be welcomed in every home.

It’s true that in Hawaii and Tonga, conquerors became kings, but in places like Samoa, Tahiti, or the Marquesas, kings weren't the ultimate rulers until white settlers established them for their own trade reasons and sold them guns to help maintain their power.

That day of the white people was over in Vait-hua. The chief now held onto his authority solely through the affection of his people. He was generous and kind, yet I remembered that he had bitten off Severin's nose, the French police officer, when the namu had driven him to madness. Whether motivated by pride in his leadership or by a memory of past wrongs he regretted, he was strict about enforcing the ban on coconut toddy, and sobriety brought peace to the days and nights.

Early in the mornings, I called "Kaoha!" from my paepae to Mrs. Seventh Man, who came each day from her bath in the via puna wearing only her earrings.

Sauntering along the bank of the stream still dripping from the spring, her wet black hair sticking to her shapely back and her tan skin shining in the flickering light and shade, she was, to me, the perfect image of Mother Eve before leaves were a sign of modesty. Her nudity was just a thing for this moment, because when she came back to help Exploding Eggs prepare my breakfast, she always wore a scarlet pareu and styled her hair like Bernhardt's.

Vanquished often showed up with her aunt, dressed carefully in a spotless, sheer tunic, with fresh flowers in her hair and a cherished pink silk garter holding her rounded arm. “Big White Brother,” she called me with pride, though I often noticed a sad wonder in her big eyes as she squatted nearby, silently watching me. Her possessive ways were lovely to see as she walked close by my side on the trail from my cabin to the beach, while Exploding Eggs looked at her with jealousy, insisting on his right as Tueni Oki Kiki, Keeper of the Golden Bed, which he described in detail to her.

We arrived at a lively scene on the beach. Women and kids were in the surf or on the rocks under the cliffs, fishing for popo, the young of uua. With bamboo poles twenty feet long and even longer lines, we stood neck-deep in the water and cast our lines with shrimp as bait. The waves tossed us around, tangling our lines, all while we laughed and shouted joyfully. After getting tired of fishing, Vanquished Often and I would tackle the crashing waves side by side, turning far out and racing back in on the breakers, flipping over everyone except the cautious ones. Or a group of us would climb high on the cliffs and jump into the sea again and again, twisting in the air, energizing every muscle with life and excitement.

Getting tired of this game, we got into canoes, fishing or sailing, and had many small adventures, as the younger and bolder ones enjoyed teasing me into protest or a guilty silence, only to save my life by the skin of my teeth.

We had gone out one morning around the southern tip and were hunting swordfish and giant sunfish when a disturbance a thousand feet away prompted my friends to shout warnings. We spotted two whales, one nursing her calf. The other seemed to be the father whale. They were massive black creatures. A group of sharks had launched themselves at this pair to try to capture the baby.

There were at least twenty-five sharks in the chaotic group, great white monsters thirty feet long, bloodthirsty man-eaters, and fierce like tigers. Although they couldn't match their prey in size or strength, they had heads the size of barrels and mouths wide enough to pull a man through their terrifying jaws. Their insatiable hunger was clear, as whales are not typically hunted by such smaller fish. Storms had battered the sea for days, possibly depriving the sharks of their usual food.

They swam in circles around the huge pair, darting in and out, clearly with some plan to distract the male. Both whales kept swinging their massive tails; their powerful flukes slammed down on the surface of the sea, creating huge waves of foam. Our boats rocked like we were in a storm.

Caught up in the pity and fear of the scene, we yelled threats and curses at the monsters, calling down the anger of the sea gods in Marquesan. Agitatedly managing the tiller and sails, we circled the battle, powerless to help the poor woman-beast and her baby. The sharks tormented them like hounds after a fox. Desperately, the parents fought, and more than one shark sank, wounded, to the depths, with one floating dead on the waves, its white belly turned up to the sun. Another was tossed high in the air by a strike from the mother’s tail. But it was an uneven fight. Eventually, we saw the baby pulled from her breast, and the mother herself sank, still struggling. She might have risen again, of course, far away, but she looked incapacitated.

We didn't stick around that bloody spot when the sharks pounced on their prey because our canoe was sitting low in the water, and seeing that sight made it clear to us that those repulsive monsters would come after us.

From such a sight, it was a relief to turn to the mountains. Along the steep trails, I roamed far with Vanquished Often and Exploding Eggs. We pretended to be alone in nature, leaving behind everything the white man had introduced. I left the chief's house wearing nothing but a native loincloth and had no shoes or hat. Vanquished Often and my valet dressed like me, and together we shouted "Kaoha!" to the chieftess and set off on our adventure.

Seventh Man was unsure about me going off without any prepared food, popoi or canned fish or biscuits, and without sleeping mats. “You'll get hungry soon,” he protested. “There’s no Gold Bed in the mountains.”

Vanquished often laughed joyfully, and the chief looked like a father whose child has just tossed a stone at a bogeyman. I rubbed my nose against his in farewell, and we started our journey, barehanded like Crusoe, but luckier than he was because we were in great company, and I had the reassuring knowledge that Marquesan youth wouldn't let me go hungry or allow themselves to go hungry either.

Our path took us up to stunning heights, along the edges of deep gorges that opened up below us like valleys straight out of Paradise. The candlenut, the ama with its lilac flowers, hibiscus, and glossy pandanus, the petavii—a type of banana with curving fronds reaching high into the air, the snake-plant, makomako, a yellow-flowered shrub, and many others none of us could name, painted the distant mountainsides in vibrant colors. Everywhere we looked, there were coconuts, guavas, and mangos. Above us, the bindweed swayed with its feathery seed pods, the parasite kouna dripped its deeply serrated leaves and crimson clusters, and thousands of orchids hung like butterflies.

“It’s beautiful in your islands, isn’t it?” Vanquished Often said wistfully. “Tell us more about the wonders there! Are the girls in your valleys really stunning, and do they all sleep in golden beds?”

All the chiefs' daughters slept in golden beds, I told her. They often wore golden slippers on their feet. When they wanted to cross the mountains, they didn't walk or ride donkeys; instead, they sat in seats covered with velvet, a fabric softer than the silk ribbon of her pink garter-armlet. These seats were pulled at incredible speed by a snorting machine made of iron, not alive, but stronger than a hundred donkeys.

“How do they make that cloth?” asked Vanquished Often, eagerly. They didn’t make it, I explained. It was made for them by girls who weren't daughters of chiefs and therefore had no golden beds.

Her eyes were filled with confusion, but Exploding Eggs listened intently and asked for more stories. I told them about wireless telegraphy. They believed that, just like they believed the stories of magic from old sorcerers, but they laughed at my description of an elevator, realizing that I was letting my imagination run wild and reaching for things that seemed impossible.

“The girls on your island must always be happy,” said Vanquished, often sighing. All the daughters of chiefs were happy, I replied. “How do they fish?” asked Exploding Eggs.

In that conversation, we continued on, walking for miles through a magical land where we were the only living beings, except for the small creatures darting across the path and the colorful birds flitting through the treetops.

At noon, we took a break for lunch. Vanquished Often would vanish into the forest, only to come back shortly with her gathered tunic filled with mangoes and guavas, and four coconuts carried in a neatly woven leaf basket on her bare shoulders. Exploding Eggs, cutting two sticks of dry wood from the underbrush, spun them against each other with such speed and skill that soon a small fire, fueled by bits of coconut fiber, blazed on a rock, with plantains piled around it to roast.

While we rested after the feast, Vanquished Often sat beside me and made me a wide-brimmed hat out of thick leaves held together with thorns. It provided a welcome shade from the sun's rays that felt good on my sensitive scalp. As we continued on our way, we came across a beautiful little wild donkey on the trail. It was scared of us but seemed to crave companionship.

“Pureekee!” said Exploding Eggs, meaning bourrique, the French word for donkey. And Vanquished Often recounted that once hundreds of these animals roamed through the jungle, descendants of a pair of donkeys that had escaped from a ship decades earlier, but that most of them had starved to death during dry spells or been eaten by starving locals.

Farther on, we passed acres of a sensitive plant, known by the Marquesans as teita hakaina, the Modest Herb. A large clearing in the mountains was filled with a sea of it, and my friends loved running through its oddly responsive leaves, which would quiver and fold its feathery fronds together at their touch. If startled more, it would open its leaflets as if to say, “What's the point? I’m shy, but I can’t hide forever.”

In such simple pleasures, the day went by, a day that I will always remember as a beautiful moment of pure joy, something that enriches anyone who has experienced it. When night fell, we created the coziest beds made of ferns and slept peacefully, free from worries, under the starlight.

As we returned the next day to the village in the valley, we found on a hill far from the beach the tombs of the sailors who first raised the flag of France in these islands. The eternal jungle had so enveloped their monuments that we struggled to push through the thick lantana and pandanus to see the stones. Neither Vanquished Often nor Exploding Eggs had ever seen them, and both only had a legendary memory of how these men of the conquering race had died.

A large piece of native basalt, worn down by seventy years of sun and rain, had a barely noticeable epitaph:

“Here lies
 Edouard Michel Halley
  Captain of the Corvette
   Officer of the Legion of Honor
    Founder of the Vait-hua colony
     Died in the line of duty
      On the 17th of ——, 1842”

I read it to my friends. They put their hands on their foreheads to imagine the dead man their grandfathers had fought and killed, as I shared the story of his death in the jungle right below us.

It was at Vait-hua that the French first claimed the Marquesas. Already present were missionaries and beachcombers from various countries, all eager individuals, competing for the hearts and minds of the locals; gin and religious commandments clashing, ritual and exploitation battling it out. Unable to control the pressures that endangered his people's peace, Iotete, the chief of Vait-hua, sent a message requesting help from the French admiral. Help arrived quickly; a garrison was set up on the beach, and the tricolor flag was raised.

Whatever the reason, it had only been about two months when the chief and the people all left their homes and ran to the hills. Commander Halley, after trying unsuccessfully to persuade and order them to come back, declared war on them as punishment for their disobedience. He organized his forces into three columns and set out to find them.

Ladebat led the way, carrying a shotgun. Halley himself walked at the front of the middle group, a young, charming Frenchman, holding just a cane, which he swung playfully as he followed the jungle path. When the soldiers got within a few feet of the main group of natives, Iotete stepped forward and shouted, “Tapu!”

Ladebat quickly shot at the chief, and in an instant, two bullets from native guns hit him in the head.

“Halley,” says the old chronicle, “stepped out from behind a coconut tree to give orders to his men, but fell to his knees as if in prayer, clutching the tree, three steps away from Ladebat's body. Five of his men collapsed, fatally wounded, beside him. Third Officer Laferriere signaled the retreat.”

Here, just a few feet from where the cheerful young Frenchman fell, the jungle had hidden his grave. Fifty thousand Marquesans have died to bring peace to the soul of that corvette commander who confidently waved his cane in front of the amazed natives. Iotete might have been better off dealing with the antics of ruthless sea adventurers, perhaps. This mausoleum was the mark of French presence.

Farther down the hill, we found the first church built in the Marquesas. It was a small wooden building with a weathered sign in French that read, “The Church of the Mother of God.” Above the broken doors were two carved hearts, one with a red dagger through it and the other with a red flame coming out of it. A black cross was placed above these symbols, which Vanquished Often and Exploding Eggs looked at with respect. To the Marquesans, these are all tiki, or charms, that have replaced their own.

Beside the decaying church stood a dilapidated refectory that once housed a dozen friars. Breadfruit, mango, and orange trees grew in the overgrown tall grass, and the garden where the priests had read their breviaries was now a jungle of tiger lilies. Among them, we found empty bottles of a “Medical Discovery,” a patent medicine sold in Boston, popular in these islands where alcohol is banned by the government.

Seventh Man, coming up the trail to meet us, found us looking at them. He picked one up and sniffed it with a hint of regret.

“Pretty strong,” he said. “Makes you drunk. Call him Kennedy. He costs a lot. Drink two pieces and you'll be sick for three days.” He smiled nostalgically, and again I thought about the day when the unfortunate officer had caught the partygoers in the woods and lost his nose. The chief walked with us down the path.

“My grandfather’s brother had the first gun in the Marquesas,” he said meaningfully when I mentioned the days of Halley. “One chief, Iotete, had plenty of trouble with the whaleman Menike. He sent for the French admiral to help him. Captain Halley came with sailors. The Frenchman never left.” Again, his teeth flashed in a smile. “My grandfather’s brother had that gun for a long time in the hills,” he added cryptically.

Too soon, the time came for me to return to my own paepae in Atuona. Vanquished Often cried at my decision, and Mrs. Seventh Man pressed her nose against mine as she begged me to stay in the home she had given to me. The chief, realizing that arguing was pointless, offered to join me on my journey back, and one midnight, he woke me up to be ready when the wind was favorable.

We walked down the path through the wind and darkness, the chief blowing a conch shell for the crew. In the straw hut where my hosts had laid out their mats so I could enjoy their cozy home, we found Mrs. Seventh Man making tea for me. Vanquished Often sat separately in the shadows, her face turned away, but as soon as my coconut shell was filled with the hot brew, she rushed forward with determination and insisted that only she could hand it to me.

All day it had been raining, and the downpour poured from the roof with a sad sound as we sat in the dim lantern light, drinking from shells. The crew came in one by one, their bare bodies dripping water, their eyes eager for a drink of the tea, into which I added a bit of rum, the last of the two liters. One squall followed another, shaking the hut. At half-past two, during a brief break that Neo guessed might last, we stepped out onto the rain-soaked beach, launched the canoe, and paddled away.

My final view of Vait-hua was the faint line of surf on the sand, and beyond it, the tall figure of Vanquished Often holding up a lantern whose light barely lit up her windblown white tunic and blurred face against the darkness.

The storm had tempted us with a brief break. We barely left the beach when the sky opened up and soaked us with rain. Water streamed down our bare backs and ran in rivulets down the muscular arms working the oars. We paddled for an hour before the wind changed in our favor, and it was a miserable hour. The canoe had an outrigger but was so narrow that no one could sit anywhere except on the sharp edge. I even dozed off on it and woke up in the sea, with the chief, who had jumped in to save me, grabbing my hair.

Morning found our canoe near the rocky coast of Hiva-oa. True to their custom, rather than heading straight for our destination or sailing directly there as the winds allowed, the Marquesans had steered toward the nearest shore, following it along to the left. This approach comes with risks, as a heavy sea was rolling in off the imposing cliffs, with huge waves crashing against the rocks, and we were inevitably caught in the trough as we hugged the coast.

We switched from sailing to rowing, and it took every bit of strength and skill from the rowers and the Seventh Man to avoid crashing the boat. Each wave lifted the fragile craft into the air, only for us to plunge back down like a rock into a bottomless pit. Every moment felt like we were about to capsize. As we struggled to avoid the rocks, the sun came up, turning every ripple of water into bright emerald, while the troughs of the jumping waves were as dark as amethysts.

Suddenly, as we slid down breathlessly, a massive wall of water rose next to us, higher and higher until it looked like it was touching the sky, clear and solid like a sheet of green glass, an incredible sight that replaced fear with amazement. For a moment, it hung above us, then came crashing down with the force of an earthquake.

Stunned, I came up from a mass of water to see our canoe entirely submerged, kept afloat only by the outrigger. Everyone was hanging on to the edge of the underwater boat while Exploding Eggs and I were bailing for our lives. They were strong swimmers and held us near the shore until we had drained enough water that they could start rowing again.

For two hours, we struggled as the chief controlled the steering oar and his crew paddled through a chaotic blend of vibrant colors that almost threw us onto the rocks. If we crashed onto them, we were done for, because even if we could have climbed onto them, the high tide would have drowned us against the cliff wall. No one showed the slightest fear, even though they paddled like champions and immediately followed every command from the chief.

Battling like this, we finally rounded Point Teaehoa and gained the safety of the Bay of Traitors. I, at least, felt a huge wave of relief, which quickly turned into excitement as we raised our sails and charged at a glorious speed straight through the waves to the welcoming beach of Atuona.

The Marquesans at the 10 o'clock service; an interesting discussion about religions and Joan of Arc in which Great Fern shares his thoughts on the devil.

I was surprised to see that the few locals around when we landed were wearing the stiff and awkward clothes of Europeans; I thought some celebration must have been planned during my absence. Then, it hit me: today is Sunday. In the beautiful, timeless valley of Vait-hua, the calendar had faded from memory just like my homeland had sunk below the horizon of the sea. Here in Atuona, where life was influenced by the presence of white people, the days must resume their limited routine once more.

Already through the clear, fresh air of a rainy morning, the mission bells were ringing loudly, and Chief Neo, forgetting the hard night of work and danger that had just passed, was excited to join me at church. It would be an honor for his chief status to sit with the distinguished white man in the place of worship, and I, remembering his incredible hospitality, was happy to give him the recognition he deserved in my own valley.

We hurried to my cabin, Exploding Eggs leading the way up the trail with my luggage on his shoulders. Cocoanuts and popoi, coffee and canned biscuits, were waiting for us when we got there. We ate quickly and then put on proper clothes, with Exploding Eggs feeling happy in a stiff collar and a worn sailor hat that used to be mine. They looked a bit strange on him, being several sizes too big, but he carried himself proudly as we headed toward the church.

In the banana lane leading to the mission, I paused to admire the beauty of the flakes on the ground. They are the outer layers of the pendulum of that elegant plant, the purple flower cone that dangles at the end of the fruit cluster with its spiral and richly colored stem. The banana plants, which we refer to as trees, lined the path and stood twenty feet tall, their long, slender leaves fluttering in the gentle breeze like banners from a castle wall.

The flakes that had fallen to the ground were beautiful. Big like a woman's veil, ribbed satin in shades of rose and purple, pink and scarlet, the delicate edges curled softly, suggesting the grace and luxury of a lovely woman’s private space. And, like all such delicate things, the charming flower that hangs like a colorful lamp in the lush banana grove is pointless once it has fulfilled its short-lived purpose. The fruit grows better when it is removed.

Opposite the large mission grounds, the worshippers were gathering under two twisted banyan trees, towering in height and spread. Behind them, a long hedge of banana plants bordered the coconut plantation of the church, and across the narrow road stood the chapel, the priests' residence, and the nuns' house, along with several empty school buildings due to the French anti-clerical law.

Exploding Eggs in his new clothes and the visiting chief from Vait-hua were welcomed by the waiting natives, while Titihuti with the tattooed legs sat down next to me. She had styled her Titian hair and oiled it until it shone like the kelp beds of Monterey. Her tunic was made of bright red calico, and she held a straw hat with a red ribbon in her hand to wear when she entered the church. “Kaoha!” I said to her, and she smiled, showing her straight, white teeth.

Suddenly, as I looked past her at the church, something caught my eye that held me in place. In the misty light, I saw Christ on the cross, just like at Calvary. The powerful figure was in the pain of dying, and at the foot of the cross stood his devoted mother and the caring John, both expressing shock and sorrow. The scene was jarring; for that moment, I forgot all about myself.

But Titihuti coughed, and I saw her tattooed legs and felt the rough roots of the banyan tree beneath me, and I was back in the courtyard. The display of the Crucifixion was set up on a basalt platform that was twenty feet long. The figures were made of golden bronze, and the cross was painted white. Above it hung the branches of a tall breadfruit tree, a fitting canopy for such a scene. The Bread of Life, indeed.

A sign on the cross had the inscription:

“1900
The Christ God Man
Lives
Reigns
Commands
Christ the Redeemer
Jubilee 1901
Atuona.”

“The tiki of the true god,” said Titihuti, noticing my gaze, and crossed herself with the enthusiasm of someone who believes in a new charm.

On the roof, a bunch of doves were cooing as we entered the church. There were bas-reliefs of cherubs and seraphs over the doorway, chubby, misshapen bodies with crooked wings, yet a heavenly vision peeked through the rough craftsmanship. A loop-holed support on either side of the facade hinted at the times when the builders had the foresight to prepare for defense in case a resurgence of paganism led the crowd to attack the Christian leaders.

Inside the doorway, a French nun in blue robes pulled on a rope hanging from the belfry, and above us, the bells rang out from two small towers. She looked curiously at me and my wild companion, her pale peasant's face looking tough, plain, and unhealthy; then she kicked at a big dog that was trying to drink the holy water from the shell next to the door. “Allez, Satan!” she said.

The benetier, big enough to submerge a baby, was attached to a board, an intriguing, darkened old bracket, carved with symbols of torture: nails, a spear, a whip, and thorns. Ivory and pearl, discolored by over a century, were inlaid. As I dipped my hand into the shell, a large lizard that had made its nest in the hollow of the bracket scurried across my knuckles.

Inside, there were benches with kneeling pads, carved from durable wood and still showing the marks from the tools used to make them. The congregation quickly gathered, with women on one side and men on the other. The women wore hats, crafted in traditional weaves that looked half like sailors’ caps, adorned with Chinese silk shawls or vibrant handkerchiefs. Everyone was barefoot except for the pale and sickly daughters of Baufré, who had to wear awkward and uncomfortable shoes. Many Daughters, the little, charming leper, arrived with Flower, who had striking red-gold hair, the Weaver of Mats, whose names were tattooed on her arm. They dipped into the font and knelt down in reverence, then bowed in prayer.

Many familiar faces I recognized. Ah Yu, the Chinese man who owned the little store beyond the banyan tree and had murder on his conscience; Lam Kai Oo, my former landlord; Flag, the policeman; Water, in all the glory of European trousers; Kake, with my small namesake on her arm. The old women were tattooed on their ears and necks in scrolls, and their lips were marked with faint stripes. The old men, their eyes surrounded by tattoos, wore earrings and necklaces made of whale teeth.

The church had white walls on the inside, decorated with colorful frescoes and dado tiles. The windows were made of vibrant stained glass. The altar and the statues of Joseph and Mary both featured beautifully carved backdrops. Outside the railing was an adorable scene of the Baby lying in a Manger on real straw, surrounded by the Virgin Mary, Joseph, the Wise Men, the shepherds, and the kings, all dressed in bright robes, along with friendly-looking cows and donkeys with red eyes and green tails.

The singing started before the priest left the sacristy. The men sang by themselves, and the women joined in, creating an alternating chant that sometimes turned into a wail and at other times had the nasal sound of a bagpipe. The Catholic chants sung in Marquesan took on a wild, primal rhythm that sent chills through the blood and made the hair stand up on the scalp.

Bishop David le Cadre stood in his elegant robes, his serious eyes above a long beard, and the mass began. The acolyte moved quickly in a short red cassock, with bare legs and feet visible. The congregation frequently responded during the mass, rising, sitting, and kneeling in an obedient manner. Baufré sat on a chair in the entryway and took notes.

Ah Kee Au was the only one at the rail. No cloth was laid out, but the bell rang to signal the mystery of transubstantiation, and everyone bowed their heads while Ah Kee Au respectfully offered his communion for the well-being of Napoleon, his grandson who had accidentally shot himself.

The service finished, the people streamed out of the church into the bright sunlight outside, and Ah Kee Au said to me, “You know that communion bread belongs to my place. My son is becoming a priest.” Lam Kai Oo, pushing forward, offered the communicant a shot of strong rum he had gotten with the governor's permission. He had heard that giving a glass of water to a communicant, who must have fasted and not had any liquids since midnight according to Church rules, was a holy deed that would bring the giver good fortune. So, the clever Chinese man thought he could make his blessing even greater by offering a drink that was better than water.

Ah Kee Au drank passionately. “I made this for you this morning,” he said happily. “Makes Napoleon more pleased.” Sincerity isn't about speaking broken English or having a drink of rum; the poor old grandfather of the Little Corporal's namesake truly believed that Napoleon would benefit from his sacred offering. He, like most Marquesans, accepted the white man's religion with little understanding. To them, it's new magic, a comfort, a distraction, and a form of entertainment. But who really knows the human heart or understands the soul?

That afternoon, while Neo and I were lying on my paepae, waiting for the right wind to take him back to his island, my neighbors gathered from all around to spend the sunny hours chatting. Sitting on the mats, they had deep discussions about the puzzles of religion, often turning to me to resolve the tricky questions they had grown tired of asking their more knowledgeable teachers about religious mysteries.

Their native language has no word for religion. Bishop Dordillon had to translate it as “Te mea e hakatika me te mea e hana mea koaha toitoi i te Etua,” which can be interpreted as “Belief in the works and love of a just God.” Etua, often spelled Atua, was the name for God among all Maori people, but religion was so intertwined with natural elements, the phenomena of nature, living things, and the heavens and sea, that it was part of everyday life and didn’t require a separate word to identify it.

Never have people been less able to understand the beliefs and doctrines wrapped up in the religious views of white men. Marquesans aren’t deep thinkers. In fact, they have a word, tahoa, which means “a headache from thinking.” Ten years of passionate and selfless work by missionaries left the islands still without a single person converted. It wasn’t until the chiefs began to endorse these strange new faiths that the people rallied to the symbol of the cross. And when they finally started to reflect on the teachings being presented to them as essential for salvation, they really did get headaches.

Even after years of regularly attending church, many of my friends still struggled with their doubts, and when they brought these up to me, I couldn’t help but furrow my brow and think deeply.

The big question about the color of Adam and Eve had been decided a long time ago. Adam and Eve were brown, just like they were. But if, as the priests suggested was likely, Adam and Eve had been forgiven and were in heaven, then why did their guilt affect all of humanity?

Also, would Satan have been able to tempt Eve if God hadn’t made the tree of knowledge forbidden? Wasn’t knowledge a good thing? What reason could the Creator and Knower of everything have had to do this?

What caused the angels to fall? Pride, the priests said. Then how did it get into heaven? asked the confused.

The resurrection of the body at the final judgment scared them. This fact, said Kake's husband, had caused people to stop burying corpses in a sitting position, with their faces between their knees and their hands under their thighs, all tied up with cords. Clearly, a person buried like that would rise up looking deformed. Now, their dead in the cemetery on the heights rested in long wooden coffins, their limbs relaxed. But other, less planned burials still happened to the unsuspecting islander.

What would God think if sharks had eaten a Marquesan? And what about when the same shark was killed and eaten by other Marquesans? And what about the early Christian forefathers who were eaten by members of other tribes, and then the cannibals were eaten in revenge, and finally the last person who ate them was eaten by sharks? Aue! That was a tough question!

At this point in the conversation, an old stranger from the valley of Taaoa, a frail man with a tattooed chest, put down his pipe and candidly shared his thoughts on the communion service. He believed it was just a form of religious cannibalism. He was confused why his people were told it was wrong to consume the flesh of another human when they were encouraged to “eat the body and drink the blood” of Ietu Kirito himself.

It was long afterward, in that distant America so puzzling to my uncomplicated savage friends, that I read under the light of an electric lamp a paragraph in “Folkways,” by William Graham Sumner, of Yale:

“The language used in communion about eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ doesn’t align with our values and doesn’t represent our experiences. It dates back to ancient times, probably stemming from cannibalism.”

The printed page disappeared, and before me appeared a vision of my paepae among the breadfruit and coconut trees, a circle of squatting dark figures in the flickering sunlight and shade, Kake in her red tunic with the baby at her breast, Exploding Eggs standing nearby with a half-eaten coconut, and the many dark eyes in their circles of ink focused on the wrinkled face of the reformed cannibal whose head throbbed with the mysteries of the white man's religion.

None too soon for me, the conversation shifted to history, which my guests mixed up with stories of the saints. Great Fern argued that if the English roasted Joan of Arc, they must have eaten her, because no one would inflict live coals, which are extremely painful, on a living person. Fire was only used on a human body to cook it for eating. This theory seemed reasonable to most of the listeners, as the cruel acts practiced by the Marquesans in their native state were considered thoughtless and never deliberate, making the concept of torture hard for their simple minds to grasp.

Malicious Gossip, a striking twenty-five-year-old with fake coffee leaves in her hair, claimed that the governor told her the English roasted Joan alive because she was a heretic. The statement was met with shocked protests from those present, who had faced that same accusation when they switched from Catholicism to Protestantism not long ago.

“Exploding Eggs,” I said quickly, “make tea for everyone.” Every hint of worry disappeared from their bright eyes when I pulled out the bottle of rum and added a spoonful of flavor to each full egg. All confusing questions were set aside, and simple social enjoyment took over on my paepae, while Great Fern shared his thoughts on the Christian devil with everyone.

The Marquesan god of darkness was Po, a vague and primal spirit. But the kuhane anera maaa of the new religion had specific and terrifying traits explained by the priests. So Great Fern imagined him as a mix between a man and a pig, with a tail like a shark’s, racing through the forests carrying a bunch of lit candlenuts and igniting the homes of the wicked.

And what about the wicked? In his view, morals as we understand them had nothing to do with their wrongdoing. The wicked were the unkind, those who were cruel to children, wives who made bad popoi, and white people with drinking privileges who forgot about hospitality.

Non-Christians might smirk at the work of missionaries among non-believers. But the missionaries are the only positive force in the islands, the only white people trying to ease the suffering and destruction caused by the white man's trade system. The spread of "civilized" commerce has obliterated every natural instinct of brotherhood, kindness, and generosity, ruining every good and pure tradition of these people connected to nature. Traders, sailors, whalers, and soldiers have been their adversaries.

Whatever the mistakes of the men of God, they have dedicated their lives every day to relentless, selfless work, enduring a lot to share with these impoverished people the hope of their own faith in a better world to come. When they have fallen short, it's because they've been missing what proselytizing religion has always been short on—a joy in life that aims to make this everyday existence more bearable, a sense of humor, and a straightforward simplicity.

Polynesians have always respected authority. In their own governance, where both priests and kings gained status through admired actions, the tapus of the priests held the same power as those of the chiefs, and life followed a few simple rules. Now, when one sect battles another; when priests tell the people that France is a Catholic nation and the Governor claims that's not true; when the Protestant pastor preaches that Sunday is a day of solemnity and prayer, while the French treat it as a day of celebration like in France; where salvation is based on many confusing and conflicting beliefs, the confused Marquesan scratches his head and shifts from one faith to another, while secretly holding on to the old gods.

The Marquesan had a joyful religion, full of humor and freedom, dances and songs, and a celebration of nature, of the greatness of their tribe or race. It was a worship that, despite its grim practices of human sacrifice, energized life.

The work of missionaries has stifled the joy of living as they have eradicated the old ways, removing everything, both good and bad, that religion meant for the native people. Instead, they have provided confusing rituals, doctrines he can barely comprehend, and a bit of solace in the hardships caused by trade.

I saw a leper sitting alone on his paepae, deeply engaged in the Scriptures, and when I asked him if he found comfort in them, he replied, “They are strong words for a weak man, and better than pig.” But only a St. Francis Xavier or a Livingstone, someone with a strong moral impact, could really lift the people from the struggle they’re stuck in.

Upon this people, vibrant and full of life, as spirited as wild horses, not weighed down like their conquerors by a history of thousands of years of limitations, the religion that has been imposed on them has been not only a numbing agent but a poison.

The marriage of Malicious Gossip; wedding traditions of the straightforward locals; the home struggles of Haabuani.

Mouth of God and his wife, Malicious Gossip, soon became close friends of my paepae. They came first to check out the amazing Golden Bed and to hear the click-click of the Iron Fingers That Make Words, and they stayed to chat, which I found delightful.

Both were in their early twenties, naive, generous, smart, and completely devoted to each other and their friends. Malicious Gossip was beautiful, with soft dark eyes, striking features, and a graceful figure that would turn heads in New York. She was entirely Marquesan, but her husband, Mouth of God, had some white ancestry. He didn’t know whose it was, since his mother's partner had been an islander. His mother, a large, stern, and Calvinistic cannibal, believed in predestination and spent her days worrying that she would end up among the damned. Her Bible was always close at hand, and often, while passing their house, I would see her climb into a breadfruit tree with it and read a chapter high up in the branches where she could avoid distractions.

They lived in a large house on three acres filled with breadfruit and coconuts, an ancient grove that had been in their family for generations. Often, I would sit on their mats, dipping a cautious finger into their popoi bowl and sipping the sweet juice of the half-ripe coconut while Mouth of God's mother spoke at length and seriously about the afterlife and the need for salvation. In exchange, Malicious Gossip spent hours on my paepae sharing stories about the customs of her people, both new and old.

“When I was thirteen,” she said, “the whalers still visited Vait-hua, my valley. A young Menike man came, tall and bright-eyed, a traveler on a whaling ship looking for adventure. I sighed for the first time in my life when I saw him. He was handsome, and unlike the other men on your ships."

“The kiss you white men give, he taught me to like. He was generous, gentle, and kind. We lived together for months in a house by the stream in the valley. When he finally sailed away, like all white men worth wanting to stay, he broke my heart. My milk turned to poison and killed our little child.

“I met later with Mouth of God. He took me to his house in the breadfruit grove. He was kind and gentle, but it took me a while to learn to love him. It was the governor who made me realize that I was his woman. It happened like this:

“That governor was someone everyone despised for his coldness and cruelty. Mouth of God worked for him in the place where medicines are prepared, having learned to mix the medicines in a bowl and to wrap cloths around the wounds of those who were sick. One day, following the traditions of the white men in charge, the governor told Mouth of God that he had to send me to the palace that night."

“When he came home to the house where we lived together, Mouth of God promised me. He said: ‘Go to the river and wash up. Put on your red tunic and flowers in your hair and head to the palace. The governor is throwing a party tonight, and you are to dance and sleep in the governor's bed.’”

Malicious Gossip shuddered and rocked back and forth on the mats. “Then I would have killed him! I yelled at him and said: ‘I won’t go to the governor! He’s a devil. I hate him with all my heart. I’m a Marquesan. What do I care about a man I hate?’”

“‘Go!’ said Mouth of God, and his eyes were as hard as the black stones of the High Place. ‘The governor is requesting you. He is the government. Since when have Marquesan women refused the orders of the adminstrateur?’”

“I cried, but I took my brightest kahu ropa from the sandalwood chest my Menike man had given me, and I walked down the path to the stream. As I walked, I cried, but my heart was heavy, and I thought about hiding a sharp knife beneath my tunic when I went to the palace. But my feet hadn't even touched the water's edge when Mouth of God called out to me.

“‘Don’t go,’ he said.”

“I replied, ‘I’ll go. You told me to go. I’m on my way.’ My tears tasted salty in my mouth.”

“‘No!’ said Mouth of God. He ran to me in the pool where I had thrown myself. There in the water, he held me, and his arms squeezed the breath from my ribs. ‘You will not go!’ he said. ‘I said those words to see if you would go to the governor. If you had gone quickly, if you hadn’t cried, I would have killed you. You are my woman. No one else will have you.'”

“Then I realized that I was his woman, and I forgot my Menike lover.

“You see,” she said to me after a moment, “I would have gone to the palace. But I would never have returned to the house of Mouth of God. That was the start of our love. He wouldn’t let anyone have me. He told the governor that I wouldn’t be coming, and he was ready to kill the governor if it came to that. But the governor laughed and said there were many others. Mouth of God and I then got married by Monsieur Vernier, in his mother’s church.

“That was how I got married. Just like the girls on your island, right?”

It was pretty much the same, I said. The only difference was in a few minor customs. She listened, captivated, while I explained our complicated dating traditions, how we would court young women for months or even years, the gifts we gave, the events we hosted, our engagement rings, how we planned weddings many months ahead, along with our orange wreaths, veils, and bridesmaids. She found all of this almost unbelievable.

“Marriage here,” she said, “can happen to a young man when he isn’t even looking for it or expecting it. No Marquesan can get married without his mother’s consent, and often she pairs him with a girl without him even considering it.”

“A young man might bring home a girl he doesn't know, maybe someone he saw on the beach in the moonlight, to stay with him that night in his mom's house. Her beauty and charm might impress his mom so much that she decides to hold a family meeting after the two have gone to bed. If the family agrees with the mom, they decide to marry the young man to that girl, and they do it this way:

“Early in the morning, just at dawn, before the young couple wakes up, all the women of the household wake them with loud screams. They beat their chests, cut themselves with shells, crying out, Aue! Aue! Neighbors rush in to find out who has died. The young man and the girl run outside in fear. Then the mother, the grandmother, and all the other women in the house sing the girl's praises, celebrating her beauty, and lamenting that they can't let her go. They angrily demand that the young man not let her leave. All the neighbors join in their cries, Aue! Aue! and beat their chests until the young man, filled with shame, asks the girl to stay.

“Then her parents are informed, and if they don’t object, the girl stays in his house. That’s often how marriage works in the Marquesas.”

Yet often, she explained, marriage wasn’t the result of a night of flirting. The young Marquesan would often bring home a girl who didn’t instantly win his mother’s favor. In that case, she would leave the next morning after breakfast, and that was it. Our respect for chastity was baffling to Malicious Gossip, even though she was familiar with all the church’s rules. To her, it was a belief preached to others by the white people, like wearing shoes or making Sunday a day of misery, and even though she had been warned that breaking this code meant being roasted forever in a never-ending cannibal pit, she couldn’t see any reason for it. She couldn’t find fault with an act that seemed to her like an innocent, natural, and harmless pastime.

The truth is that no value was, or is, placed on virginity in all of Polynesia; young women are free to act as they wish without judgment or concern. Only a deep and genuine connection keeps her with the man she chooses, and she then respects his desires when it comes to loyalty, while still largely maintaining control over herself.

The Marquesan woman, however, often denies her husband the freedom she herself freely enjoys. This tradition remains a notable remnant of polyandry, where the wife enforced loyalty on everyone who shared her affections, with the threat of being kicked out of the home.

This was exactly the situation of a household not far from my cabin. Haabuani, the master of ceremonies at the dances, the best carver and drum player in all of Atuona, was of pure Marquesan heritage but spoke French fluently and passionately defended the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility—even getting into a physical fight with a defiant Protestant right on my very paepae—explained his views.

“If I have a friend who temporarily wants my wife, Toho, I’m okay with that if she agrees. But my enemy shouldn’t have that privilege with my approval. I’d be happy for you to admire her. You’ve been nice to me. You’ve treated me like a leader and you’ve bought my kava bowl. But, écoutez, Monsieur, Toho does what she wants, yet if I so much as throw a pebble in another pool, she gets angry. Look, I still have the bruises from her beating.”

With a tearful whine, he showed us the bruises from Toho's anger and let us know that the three piastres he owed me for the kava bowl had been tracked by his wife to Le Brunnec's store, where Flower, Lam Kai Oo’s daughter, had used them to buy ribbons. In her rage, Toho had beaten him so badly that he lay groaning on the mats for a day and a night.

“That is how it should be,” said Malicious Gossip, sternly, while her curved lips pressed into straight lines. Sexual morality means sticking to sexual taboos, everywhere in the world.

Free polyandry still exists in many countries I've seen, and in others, its decline leaves behind these fragmented remnants. I've visited the Subano tribe in the west and north of Mindanao in the Philippines, where wealthy men practice polygamy, and the poorer individuals still engage in polyandry. The economic conditions there create similar dynamics, under a different facade, as in Europe or America, where rich men maintain multiple relationships, and many workers only support one sex worker.

Polyandry mostly occurs in poorer countries, where there is often a shortage of women. This leads to polyandry being a result of a surplus of men due to a lack of resources. In reality, women are believed to come from having enough nutrition; more boys than girls are born in rural areas because urban diets are typically richer, especially in meat and sugar. It's interesting to note that the families of the pioneers in the western United States had a strikingly higher number of boys.

In the Marquesas, where life was always tough and food scarce, there were always more men than women, even with the regular wars that claimed many male lives. Another reason was that male babies were often spared while female babies were killed due to infanticide, which was also driven by hunger. The surplus of men made them more submissive to the authority of women, who frequently held power in lasting partnerships, demanding wealth and attention from their husbands.

Yet—and this is a very important fact—the father’s role in the child remained the foundation of the social system.

Throughout all of Australia, Melanesia, and Papua to the east, and America to the west, the system of maternal rights was dominant among early societies. Children took their lineage from their mothers, inherited names from her, and received property through her. I once knew a Hawaiian nobleman who remarked on this system, stating that it had its benefits, as no child could be labeled a bastard, and the woman, who endured the most, received honor from her descendants. He claimed to be the son of a chieftess, but said his father, a king, was the child of a Black cobbler.

The father-right, which is so familiar to us that it seems like the only natural or existing social system today, actually developed quite recently among all races except for Caucasians and some tribes of the Mongols. However, in the Marquesas, islands isolated from all other peoples throughout history, the father-right thrived despite the challenges it faced in a polyandrous society.

Each woman had multiple husbands, who she governed. It was impossible to determine the true paternity of her children. However, the Marquesans held onto the idea of fatherhood so strongly that even this fact couldn't change it. One husband was legally recognized as the father of all her children and was, at least seemingly, the owner of the household and any small personal property under communal ownership. The man remained, though only by name, the head of the polyandrous family.

I couldn't help but see in this strange fact another sign of the ancient connection between the first people of my own race and the prehistoric ancestors of Malicious Gossip and Haabunai. My wild friends, with their sharp features, large straight eyes, and olive skin, still showed signs of their Caucasian heritage. Their ancestors and mine might have hunted the huge winged lizards together across the primeval wilderness until, driven by who knows what need for adventure or survival, certain tribes embarked on that journey through Europe and Asia towards America that ultimately led, when a continent disappeared beneath their feet, to these islands in the southern seas.

It was quite a stretch for my imagination to make the leap from my paepae in the jungle at the base of Temetiu, but as I admired the beauty and elegance of Malicious Gossip sitting on my mats in her red pareu, I enjoyed believing it was true.

“We're cousins,” I said to her, handing her a freshly opened coconut that Exploding Eggs brought.

"You’re a great leader, but we care for you like a brother," she replied seriously, raising the shell bowl to her lips.

Filling the popoi pits during breadfruit season; the legend of the mei; a secret festival in a hidden valley.

On the way to the beach one morning, I ran into Great Fern, my landlord. Dressed in a bright yellow pareu, he had a huge kooka, or basket made of coconut fiber, slung over his shoulders, packed with about two hundred pounds of breadfruit. His amazing muscles were clearly visible on his fit body, glistening with sweat as if he had just come from the river.

“Kaoha, Great Fern!” I said. “Where are you headed with the mei?”

“It is Meinui, the season of the breadfruit,” he replied. “We fill the popoi pit beside my house.”

There’s a word in the Marquesan language that paints a vivid picture of the horrors of starvation. It translates to “one who is burned to drive away a drought.” In these isolated islands, the survival of the people relies heavily on the blessing of rain. While the weather had been generous for several years, with rain showers almost every day, there were times in the past when even the toughest plants nearly vanished during dry spells. As a result, the Marquesans had to come up with a way to preserve breadfruit for a long time, and by getting used to sour food, they learned to enjoy it—much like many Americans savor funky cheeses and fish, or happily drink absinthe, bitters, and other challenging beverages.

In this season of abundant breadfruit, Great Fern had opened his popoi pit and was restocking it. A few people who were eating from it were assisting him. Only the curiosity of the traveler for something unusual kept me close enough to smell it.

It was dug into the ground, four feet deep and maybe five in diameter, and was only about twelve years old, making it a relatively small and recently acquired item in the eyes of my fierce friends. Mouth of God and Malicious Gossip had a popoi pit excavated by his grandfather, who was eaten by the people of Taaoa, and close to Vaikehu's house, a descendant of the only Marquesan queen, there was an ancient hole, or uuama tehito, the origin of which had been lost over the centuries. It was fifty feet long and reportedly even deeper, though no living Marquesan had ever accessed its contents, nor would they unless faced with severe famine. It was tapu to the memory of the deceased.

All over the valley, people were busy filling the pits as a backup for future needs. Men hurried up and down the trails, carrying the kookas loaded with ripe fruit, which were as large as Edam cheeses and had dimples on the surface like a golf ball. A breadfruit weighs between two and eight pounds, and the giants like Great Fern or Haabuani transported two or three hundred pounds in the kookas for miles along the steep and rocky trails.

In the banana groves or among the clusters of ti, women were collecting leaves to line and cover the pits, while naked children ran around the area, getting in the way and believing they were being helpful, just like kids do everywhere when a feast is being prepared.

There was a time when every grove of breadfruit had its owners, who protected it for their personal use, and even each tree had its designated owner, or maybe a few. A growing population makes every bite of food matter. I once knew an English judge in Ceylon who had to determine the legal ownership of a tiny fraction—1/2520—of ten coconut trees. But my friends, who were filling the popoi pits, could pick from any tree they wanted. There was plenty of breadfruit now that there were fewer people.

Great Fern was harvesting from a grove on the mountainside above my house. Standing under one of the impressive trees with its unusual branches and large, shiny, dark-green leaves towering about ninety feet above him, he reached for the closer branches with an omei, a long stick with a forked end that had a small net made of coconut fiber attached. Skillfully twisting a fruit off its stem with a quick jerk of the split tip, he caught it in the net and lowered it to the kooka on the ground beside him.

When he collected the best fruit within reach, he climbed the tree, carrying the omei. Each brown toe gripped the branches like a finger, agile and independent from the others due to years of holding onto limbs and rocks. This is notable among the Marquesans; in older and hardworking individuals, each toe often stands about half an inch apart from the others, and I’ve seen the big toe positioned against the other four like a thumb. My neighbors easily picked up small items with their toes and curled them back out of sight, like a fist, while sitting.

Gripping a branch tightly with its hand-like feet, Great Fern wielded the omei, knocking down other breadfruit one by one, being careful not to bruise them. The coconut can be thrown eighty feet, with a twisting motion that lands it on one end so it doesn't break. But the mei is delicate and gets ruined if handled roughly.

Working this way, Great Fern and his neighbors brought down about four hundred breadfruit every day to the popoi pit, stacking them there to be prepared by the women. Apporo and her friends kept busy piercing each fruit with a sharp stick and laying them on the ground to ferment overnight.

In the morning, sitting on their heels and singing as they worked, the women scraped the skin off the fermented mei with cowry shells and grated the fruit into the pit they had lined with banana leaves. Occasionally, they stood in the pit and stomped down the mass of pulp or pounded it with wooden clubs.

For more than two weeks, the work went on. In ancient times, there was a lot of ceremony surrounding this preparation for future famine, but today in Atuona, only one rule was enforced: no sexual intercourse for those who were filling the pits.

“To break that tapu,” said Great Fern, “would mean illness and disaster. Anyone who ate that popoi would throw up. The forbidden food cannot stay in the stomach.”

To throw up during the two weeks spent trying to preserve the breadfruit raised serious doubts that the unfortunate person had broken the tapu. When their own brutal laws were in play, that unlucky individual often died from the fear of being found out and the anger of the gods. To avoid such a fate, those who were not strong and healthy stayed out of the task.

This interesting link between sex and cooking applies in many other situations. A woman making oil from dried coconuts was prohibited from sexual relations for four or five days, and she believed that if she broke this prohibition, her efforts would yield no oil. A man cooking in an oven at night followed the same rule. I don’t know, and wasn’t able to find out, where these restrictions came from. Like many of our own traditions, it has been lost in the mists of time.

A Tahitian legend about the origin of the breadfruit tells that in ancient times, the people lived off araea, red earth. A couple had a frail son, their only child, who gradually grew weaker on the diet of earth. Eventually, the father pleaded with the gods to accept him as an offering and to let him become food for his son. From the darkness of the temple, the gods finally responded, granting his request. He returned to his wife and prepared for death, telling her to bury his head, heart, and stomach at different places in the forest.

“When you hear a sound at night like a leaf, then a flower, followed by the sound of an unripe fruit, and then a ripe, round fruit hitting the ground, know that it is I who have become food for our son,” he said, and died.

She listened to him, and on the second night, she heard the sounds. In the morning, she and her son discovered a massive and amazing tree where the stomach had been buried. The Tahitians believe that the coconut, chestnut, and yam miraculously sprouted from other parts of a man's body.

Breadfruit, as Percy Smith noted, was introduced to these islands from Java by the ancestors of the Polynesians, who left India several centuries before Christ. They arrived in Indonesia as rice-eaters but discovered breadfruit there, “which they took with them in their great migration into these Pacific islands more than two centuries after the start of this era.”

Smith finds evidence for this claim in the Tahitian legend. In the Polynesian language araea, the “red earth” in the story is the same as vari, and in Indonesia, there were words like fare or pare, in Malay padi or peri, and in Malagasy vari, all meaning rice. A Rarotongan legend tells that in Hawaiki, two new fruits were found, and the vari was set aside. These fruits were the breadfruit and the horse-chestnut, neither of which is native to Polynesia.

I shared these stories about the mei with Great Fern, who responded: “Aue! Maybe. The old gods were powerful, and the world is full of wonders. As for me, I'm a Christian. The breadfruit is ripening, and I'm filling the popoi pit.”

Great Fern was my friend, and, as he said, a Christian, but I worry that he didn't share everything he knew about the ancient customs. There was a naive simplicity in his tone when he talked about them, like a child who wants you to believe that the cat ate the jam. And on the night when the popoi pits were filled, packed down, and overflowing, after being covered with banana leaves and weighed down with heavy stones, and once the season's work was done, something happened that left me with a lot of unclear thoughts.

I was woken up at midnight by the loud thud of a coconut hitting the iron roof above me. Often during the rainy nights, this sound of nuts falling would startle me, banging and clattering like bullets overhead. But on this night, as I tried to drift back to sleep, my sleepy ears were bothered by something else, less like a sound and more like a quiet, throbbing vibration—faint but unsettling.

I sat up in my Golden Bed and listened. Exploding Eggs was gone from his mat. The little house was silent and empty. Straining my ears, I heard it clearly through the rustling sounds of the forest and the dripping rain from the eaves. It was the distant, faint, almost inaudible sound of a drum beating.

Old stories ruffled my hair as I stood on my paepae listening to them. Sometimes I thought it was just my imagination; other times I knew I really heard them. Finally, wrapping a pareu around myself, I headed down my path to the valley road. The sound was drowned out here by the playful splash of the stream, but as I stood hesitantly in the dark beneath a dripping banana tree, I saw a dark figure slip silently past me, heading up toward the High Place. It was followed by another one, moving through the night like a deeper shadow. I went back to my cabin, fought my strong urge to close and barricade the door, and got into bed. After a long time, I finally fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, Exploding Eggs was making my breakfast as usual. Sunlight poured over the breadfruit and palm trees, and the night felt like a dream. But there were whispers in the village about a strange dance being held by the people of Nuka-hiva, on another island, to celebrate the harvest of the mei. Odd rituals were hinted at, with only men participating, dancing completely naked and honoring the old gods.

This was an old tradition, said Great Fern, with those too-innocent eyes looking at me innocently. It has always been the ceremony of Thanksgiving to the ancient gods, for a plentiful harvest, a way to make amends, and to ask for their continued favor. As for him, he was a Christian. Such rituals were no longer practiced in Atuona.

I asked no more questions. Giving thanks to an all-powerful ruler for the bounty of the harvest season is nearly universal. We've made a proclamation and included it in church services and the slaughter of turkeys, similar to how these kids express it through dancing, just like Saul did in the past.

The season's work done, Great Fern and Apporo relaxed, feeling satisfied after ensuring a good future. However, some of their neighbors, driven by ambition and motivated by the abundance of mei available without the hint of greed from excessive possessions, kept at it until they filled three pits. These individuals were admired and somewhat envied, having earned significant respect. “He has three popoi pits,” they said, just as we might talk about someone who owns a magnificent jewel or a Velasquez.

The grated breadfruit in the holes was called ma and was related to popoi like dough is to bread. When the ma was soured enough, Apporo opened the pit each morning and took out enough for the day’s supply, putting the stones back on the banana leaves afterward. The presence of insects and lizards didn’t affect the flavor.

I often sat on her paepae and watched her prepare the day's dinner. She took the spoiled mass of ma and put it into a long wooden trough carved from a tree trunk, then added water and mixed it into a paste with the consistency of custard. This paste, she wrapped in purua leaves and set to bake in a traditional stone oven that stood near the pit.

Apporo smoked cigarettes while it baked, maybe to keep track of time. Marquesans count minutes by cigarettes, saying, “I’ll do so-and-so in three cigarettes,” or, “It’s two cigarettes from my place to his.”

When the cigarettes were finished, or when her instinct as a housewife told Apporo that the dish was cooked just right, it went back into the trough again and was mashed with the keatukipopoi, the stone pounder known to all primitive cultures. Next, a pahake, or wooden bowl about eighteen inches wide, received it, and the final step of the process followed.

Taking a handful of the mixture, Apporo put it in another pahake and kneaded it for a long time with her fingers, using oil from crushed coconuts as a lubricant. Finally, with a proud smile, she presented me with a dish of popoi kaoi, the absolute best popoi that could possibly be made.

It’s a meal fit for a sorcerer. I’d rather eat a year-old paste used by bill posters. It tastes like sour, acidic custard. Still, white people learn to eat it, even to crave it. Captain Capriata of the schooner Roberta, which sometimes docked in Atuona Bay, could hardly digest anything else. Hand him a bowl of popoi and a stewed or roasted cat, and his Corsican heart would warm to the giver.

As bread or meat is to us, so was popoi to my tan-skinned friends. They ate it daily, sometimes three or four times a day, and devoured huge amounts at a sitting. Just as the peasant in certain parts of Europe relies on black bread and cheese, the poor Irish on potatoes or porridge, and the Scots on oatmeal, the Marquesan fills up on popoi and actually prefers it to anything else.

Many times, when I couldn't escape the hospitality of my neighbors, I joined them by the overflowing pahake set on their paepae, and dipped my finger with them, even though they were surprised by my lack of appetite. In the quiet that seemed appropriate for the serious act of eating, everyone dipped their index and middle fingers into the bowl and carefully brought a portion of the sticky mass to their mouths, returning their fingers to the bowl clean of any remnants. Little kids, who started eating popoi before they were fully weaned, would plunge their whole hands into the dish, and often the skinny, scruffy dogs wandering around the paepaes wouldn't miss their turn either.

If one accepts the germ theory, one might find in the popoi bowl a cause for the rapid spread of epidemics since the Europeans brought disease to the islands.

A walk in the jungle; the elderly woman in the breadfruit tree; a night in a traditional hut on the mountain.

Atuona Valley was napping, as it usually does in the afternoons, when the governor, along with the palace guard, both carrying shotguns, invited me to hike up the mountain to hunt for kukus for dinner. The kuku is a small green turtle dove, very common in the islands, also known as u'u and kukupa. No matter what you call it, the green-feathered treat is delicious when grilled or fried.

I didn't grab a gun because unless I’m really hungry, I don’t like to kill. We set off together, climbing the trail one after another, but the excitement of the chase soon pulled my friends into the thicker brush where the little doves tempted them, and only the loud crack of an occasional shot echoing off the cliffs interrupted my solitude.

The dark stillness of the deep valley, where the shadows of the mountains fell over coconut groves and miles of tangled brush, reminded me of a canyon in New York City, right in the heart of the financial world, which felt gloomy even at noon. The towering buildings cast a shadow over the street and dampened the spirits of the people living there, just like mountains. There, when I unexpectedly stepped out from the brightly-lit cage of countless people chasing money, and found the street momentarily empty, with no sign of animals or humans in its dark stretch, I experienced the same feeling of solitude and awe as I did in this jungle. Suddenly, a crowd of people appeared from various directions, breaking the spell.

But here, in Atuona Valley, the hoot of the owl, the kouku, which in Malay is the ghost-bird, the burong-hantu, seemed to deepen the silence. Doesn’t that word hantu, meaning in Malay an evil spirit, have some obscure connection to our American Black term “hant,” a goblin or ghost? Certainly, the bird's long and dismal “Hoo-oo-oo” wailing through the shuddering forest brought back dim and chilling memories of stories told by candlelight when I was a child in Maryland.

Here on the lower levels, I was still among the coconut groves. The trail wound through acres of them, their tall gray trunks rising like cathedral arches eighty feet above a green carpet of creeping vines. Then it dipped back into the woods, where one or two palms tried to grow upward from a dense jungle. Everywhere I saw the nuts tied by their natural stems in clumps of forty or fifty, attached to limbs that had been cut and tied between trees. These had been collected by climbers and left like this to be gathered for drying into copra.

Constantly, ripe nuts that hadn’t been picked fell around me. These heavy projectiles, weighing six or seven pounds each, dropped from heights of fifty to one hundred feet and hit the ground with a dull thud. The roads and trails were covered with them. They drop every hour of the day in the tropics, yet I’ve never seen anyone get hurt by them. I had some close calls myself, and I’ve heard of a few people who were seriously injured or even killed by them, but those accidents are totally out of proportion to the number of nuts falling from the trees. You become skilled at dodging, and there’s an instinct that makes your eyes go to the branch about to drop a mei, or the palm ready to release a coconut.

As I walked up the trail, stopping occasionally to look around, I came across an old woman leaning weakly on a tall staff. Even though it was the time for afternoon resting, she was out for some reason, and I paused to say “Kaoha” to her. She looked like a figure of misery, hunched almost double, her frail, aged limbs dressed in a tattered pareu, and her thin arms gripping the stick that supported her. She was so old that she seemed unable to hear my greeting, responding only with a mumble, while her cloudy eyes glinted up at me between drooping lids.

Such a sad scene stirred my sympathy, but since she didn’t seem to want help, I left her leaning on her staff and continued down the trail. I paused once more to look at the shaded valley below, reflecting on the centuries it had witnessed and the fleeting moment of a man's life. Standing there, I almost lost my own, because suddenly I heard a whirring sound like that of a shrapnel shell on its deadly mission, and a projectile landed at my feet.

I realized it was a breadfruit and that I was beneath the tallest breadfruit tree I had ever seen, reaching a hundred feet high and spreading out like a giant oak. At the very top branches was the unsteady old woman I had greeted, holding a staff that was about twelve feet long in both hands. She was energetically and skillfully beating the fruit from the tree, her tattered clothes blowing in the wind, and her thin, naked body among the branches resembled that of an old ape.

How she managed to stay there was a mystery, as she seemed to be hanging off a limb at a right angle, but she only had a toe gripping it. No part of her body except her feet made contact with the branch, and she had no other support, yet she swung the staff around energetically and sent down more six-pounders, making me run away without thinking twice.

The row of houses along the upper parts of Atuona Valley was quiet at this time, and all around, native homes were crumbling, their collapsing walls and sagging roofs a reminder of the thousands who once lived here. Sometimes in our own country, we see abandoned houses falling into disrepair, clearly showing signs of death or abandonment, and I have followed armies that destroyed entire areas and killed people or chased them into the hills, but the first is a lonely instance, and the second, while horrific, still contains the element of activity, of movement and struggling life. The decaying homes of the Marquesan people speak more powerfully of death than do sunken graves.

In these valleys, which once held thousands when the white man's influence arrived, the abandoned paepaes stand as solemn reminders of a race that has died out. The jungle has overgrown them, and only fragments of the houses that used to be there remain. Their owners have passed away, leaving no descendants to live in their homes; neighbors have taken their few possessions, and nature has reclaimed its territory. In every valley, these dark reminders of the so-called benefits of civilization are hidden in the underbrush.

None walks on the stones that supported the homes of the dead. They are tapu; around them flutter the veinahae, the matiahae, and the etuahae, terrifying vampires and ghosts that guard the corpse and wait to claim the living. These ghastly phantoms have feasted well; entire islands belong to them, and soon they will take their place on the paepae of the last Marquesan.

I reached the top of the ravine and stopped to take in the view. The steep hills rose sharply and rugged a mile away; the coconut trees stopped at a lower elevation, and where I was standing, the cliffs were covered in wild trees, bushes, and vines. The colors ranged from black to the lightest green, from smoky peaks and dark valleys to the stream flowing a hundred feet below the path.

A hundred types of flowers sent their fragrance into the quiet scene. The frangipani, the sweet-smelling red jasmine, and tropical gardenias filled the warm air with their strong scents.

Beside the trail, there stood a hutu tree with bright red flowers among large leaves, and fruit that was prickly and shaped like pears. This fruit shouldn’t be eaten by people, but it’s unethically used by lazy fishermen to ensure miraculous catches. Streams are blocked, and the pears are tossed in. Soon, the fish get dazed and float to the surface, ready to be caught in the nets of those using the poison. Their taste and edibility remain unaffected.

The keoho, a thorny bush, snagged my clothes as I stepped off the trail. Its defensive spikes often act as pins for locals who craft hats or umbrellas from leaves while in the forest. Next to me was the putara, a bush with broad leaves, and the lemon hibiscus, with its large yellow flower and black center, twisted through these shrubs and wrapped around the trunk of the massive aea, where the kuku softly called to its partner. Frequently, the flowering vine impeded my movement. I struggled to free myself from its grasp as I pushed my way through the dense greenery, and pausing to catch my breath, I noticed new and stranger plants around me—orchids, giant vines, the noni enata, a small shrub with crimson fruits, and the toa, or ironwood, which was once used for making deadly weapons in battles but now spread its branches peacefully among the lush greenery of its neighbors.

The umbrella fern, mana-mana-hine, was everywhere. The ama, the candlenut tree, dropped its oily nuts onto the ground. The puu-epu, the paper mulberry, with its yellow flowers and soft, round leaves, jostled against the pandanus and hibiscus; the ena-vao, a wild ginger with edible but spicy cones, and the lacebark tree, the faufee, which provides cordage from its bark, competed for space in the rich soil and struggled for sunlight that never quite reached their roots, even on the sunniest days.

I stumbled through the underbrush, tripping over decayed trees and fighting my way through the thick shrubs and tangled vines.

Up here, tucked away in the forest, there were three or four houses; not the bright blue or white cabins of the settlement, but open native huts, with smoke rising from the fire in a circle of stones on the paepaes. The time for sleeping had passed, and men and women sat in front of the troughs mashing the ma for the popoi, or lounged on the platform in red and yellow pareus, watching the breadfruit roast. They must be really struggling, as I noticed that the houses lacked any of the ugliness the Marquesans copied from the whites. But they also weren't the miserable straw and thatch huts I had seen in the valley, which I thought were the only remains of the native architecture.

As I got closer, I realized I had come upon a house like the one the Marquesan knew in his prime, when a sense of pride in craftsmanship led to the creation of amazing and beautiful structures made of local wood, decorated with intricate and interesting designs.

It was built on a raised platform about ten feet high, accessed by a wide, smooth staircase made of the same large black rocks. The house, long and narrow, covered the entire platform except for a front porch, the edge of which was surrounded by bamboo cleverly crafted into square patterns. A cheerful call of “Kaoha!” in response to mine invited me to the family gathering place, and I climbed the steps eagerly.

I was greeted by a strong and attractive native, wearing earrings, a necklace, and a red pareu, who rubbed his nose against mine and sniffed me ceremoniously, welcoming me as a valued guest. Several women did the same, while naked children rushed forward, curious to see the outsider.

Seeing my interest and admiration for his house, my host showed it off with clear pride. Its frame was made of large upright bamboo stalks, covered with strips of hibiscus, all beautifully and securely bound with faufee cord. On this framework were the walls, built from canes arranged in a delicate pattern, with the fastenings made from purau or other rattan-like vines, all tied neatly and uniformly. Since the residence was only about a dozen feet deep but three times that long, these walls were not only pleasing to the eye but also very functional, providing shade inside while the gaps between the canes allowed plenty of light and air in.

We walked in through a low entrance and discovered the long room to be roomy, cool, and filled with the scents of the forest. There was no furniture except for two large, shiny coconut tree trunks stretching the entire length of the space, and between them were heaps of mats with various patterns and vibrant colors made from roots and herbs.

While I admired these, noticing their vibrant colors and soft, yet sturdy texture, a gentle rustling on the palm-thatched roof signaled the arrival of rain. My host couldn't imagine a stranger leaving his house at dusk, especially when the rain could turn into a heavy downpour by morning. Turning down his invitation would have meant leaving behind a confused and distressed household.

Popoi bowls and wooden platters filled with roasted breadfruit were brought inside, and while the pouring rain extinguished the fires on the paepae, the candlenuts were lit and everyone settled in for the evening meal. The breadfruit and yams, along with a refreshing drink of coconut milk, satisfied the hunger from my tough climb. Afterward, the women took away the empty bowls while my host and I laid on the mats, smoking and watching the rain fall in the darkening twilight.

Few houses like his remained on Hiva-Oe, he said in response to my compliments. The people loved the ways of the whites and longed for homes made of redwood planks with iron roofs. For himself, he cherished the traditions of his ancestors, and although he had to comply with tax payments and the rules of new laws, he refused to work in the copra groves or on traders' ships. His father had been a famous warrior. The u'u was no longer used, replaced by the guns of the whites. The old songs had been forgotten. But he, who had traveled far, seen the capital of the world, Tahiti, and learned a lot about the ways of foreigners, wanted nothing to do with them. He would live like his fathers had lived, and die as they had died.

“It won’t be long. We disappear like small fish in front of the hunger of the mako. The High Places are destroyed, and the pahue covers our paepaes. It doesn’t matter. E tupu te fau; e toro to farero, e mou te taata. The hibiscus will grow, the coral will spread, and humanity will fade away. There is sleep in your eyelids, and the mats are ready.”

His hospitality placed me in the prime spot, despite my objections, and soon I found myself lying between my host and his wife, while the other members of the household lay in a close line beyond her on the mats that filled the space between the palm trunks. Everyone slept with the backs of their heads on one beam and their knees over the other, but I found comfort on the soft pile between them. My companions slept soundly, as I’ve noticed men do in all places where people live close to, and spend much time in, the sea. There was no snoring or groaning, no restless movements of arms or legs, no grimaces or frowns that usually characterize the restless sleep of most city dwellers and those of us who stress out or burn the candle at both ends.

I lay there listening for a while to their soft breathing and the sound of the rain tapping on the thatch, but eventually, my eyes closed, and I was only awakened by the dawn.

The home of Lam Kai Oo; making copra; wonders of the coconut groves; the wisdom of pigs; and a crab that understands the laws of gravity.

Next morning, after saying goodbye to my hosts, I headed down the mountain in the early freshness of a sunny, rain-cleared morning. I followed a trail I hadn’t seen before, a path as steep as a staircase, surrounded by the water-drenched jungle pressing in so closely that at times I could only see the sky through the overlapping fronds of the tree ferns above me.

I had walked about a mile without seeing any signs of people, only listening to the birds chirping and the rustling leaves, when a heavy rain started. Continuing on, weighed down by my wet clothes and struggling on the path that had quickly turned into a small stream, I stumbled upon a small clearing with a grimy, dark shack, like a rundown house on the edge of Canton, not elevated on a paepae but sitting in a patch of mud and years of filth.

Two kids, around three or four years old, were playing naked in the mud, and Flower, with her red-gold hair, known as the most wicked woman in the Marquesas, was ironing her dresses on the porch floor. She looked up and called for me to come inside.

This was the house of Lam Kai Oo, the adopted father of Flower. Seventy-one years old, Lam Kai Oo had lived here since he left his job with Captain Hart, the unfortunate American cotton planter, and he had buried three native wives here. His fourth wife, a twenty-year-old woman, sat in the shade of a copra shed nursing their six-month-old baby. Her breasts were dark blue, almost black, a common trait of nursing mothers in this area.

Both the mother and Flower insisted that I should make Many Daughters my wife while I was in Atuona, and if not her, then another friend they had picked out for me. Flower herself had honored me by suggesting a temporary relationship, but I convinced her that I wasn’t worthy of her beauty and talents. Any argument I made that it wasn’t in line with my principles, or even that it was un-Christian, led to bursts of laughter from everyone listening; honestly, the whites laughed the loudest.

Beneath a roof of palm leaves, Lam Kai Oo was drying coconuts. His wrinkled yellow body straddled a kind of bench with a sharp-pointed stick of ironwood attached. Grabbing each nut with his claw-like hands, he pressed it against this point, twisting and turning it as he tore off the thick, fibrous husk. Then he split each nut in half with a precise strike of a heavy knife. For the best copra-making, the half-nuts should be placed in the sun with the concave side up. As the meat starts to dry, it pulls away from the shell and can be easily removed, resulting in copra, the base for many beauty products, soaps, and creams made from cocoa oil.

As it rains a lot in the Marquesas, drying is often done in ovens, even though sun-dried copra sells for a higher price. Lam Kai Oo was running such an oven, which was basically just a simple setup of stones held together with mud, topped with a shed made of palm trunks and thatch. The halved coconuts were placed in mud cups and arranged on wooden racks above the oven. With the doors closed, a fire was lit in the stone furnace, using cocoa husks and brush as fuel from the outside. This type of oven doesn't dry the nuts evenly. The smoke darkens them, and the oil extracted from them contains unwanted creosote. Hot-water pipes provide the best heating source besides the sun, but Lam Kai Oo was once again paying the price for his poverty, just like poor people do all around the world.

Forty-four years earlier, he had left California after dedicating seven years of his life to building American railroads. The smoke of the Civil War had barely cleared when Captain Hart had convinced him, Ah Yu, and other Chinese from California to come to Hiva-oa and work on his cotton plantations. Cannibalism was common back then. I asked the old man if he had seen it.

“My friend eats a lot,” he replied. “The Hawaiian doesn’t like Chinese people. They speak poorly about me.”

He told me how once the Lord saved him from drowning. He was in a canoe headed to Vait-hua with a lay brother from the Catholic Mission and several locals. There was going to be a church feast, and Lam Kai Oo was bringing six hundred Chile piastres to bet on his skills against the locals in gambling; Lam, of course, would run the wheel of supposed chance.

The boat flipped over in deep water. The lay brother couldn’t swim, but he was pulled up to the bottom of the flipped boat, while the others held on to its edges. He prayed for hours, while the others, raising their faces above the crashing waves, shouted loud amens to his prayers. Finally, the waves brought them into shallow water. The brother sincerely thanked for their rescue, but Lam thought that the same magic should bring back the six hundred pieces of silver that had sunk into the sea.

“My savior, may the Lord help you,” he said. “It’s the same for him; it’s hell to live when you’re poor. The Lord catches the money; I’ll give fifty dollars to the church.”

He sighed in frustration and tossed more cocoa husks into his makeshift oven. The rain had stopped, drifting away in a gray curtain down the valley, and as I carefully navigated the muddy yard, I followed it into the sunlight.

My path led me through the coconut groves that always make the island hum with their rustling. These tall, graceful palms are great companions, and I’ve developed a real fondness for them, much like a person has for their dog. Like me, they can’t thrive for long unless they have a view of the ocean. Their need is more practical than mine; they rely on air and water to survive. The more water that flows up their trunks daily and evaporates from their leaves, the more they grow and produce.

Evaporation largely depends on the free movement of air, so the ideal locations for coconut plantations are by the seaside, where they can be exposed to winds. They thrive by the ocean and will grow even with their trunks submerged in saltwater at high tide.

These trunks, three feet wide at the base and smoothly tapering to about twelve inches at the top, are really just pipes for delivering water to the thirsty fronds. If you cut them open, you'd find a huge number of hollow reeds, held together by a resinous substance and protected by a thick, tough bark. There are no branches or leaves except at the very top of the trunk, where a perfectly symmetrical and huge bouquet of leaves emerges, with plumes reaching a dozen feet long or more, swaying with every breeze and in storms thrashing against the tree as if they were alive.

I used to wonder why these large leaves, swayed by the gentlest breeze as well as the strongest gusts, weren’t ripped off the tree. But once I got to know the coconut palm as a close friend, I realized that nature had equipped it to survive on the windy beaches with the same careful thought for individual needs that can be seen in the electric batteries and lights of certain fish, or in the pollination of the fig. A fine but strong mat, attached to the bark under the stalk, wraps halfway around the tree and extends three feet up the leaf, holding it securely to the trunk while allowing it plenty of freedom to move. It acts as a natural brace, flexible and stretchy.

There's hardly a need of the islander that isn’t met by these friendly trees. Their wood makes the best poles, provides rafters and pillars for local houses, and serves as knee- and head-rests for their beds, rollers for large canoes or whale boats, barriers against wild pigs, and fuel. The leaves are used for screens and roofs of homes, baskets, and coverings, and in the pagan temples of Tahiti, they were made into rosaries or prayer counters. The candlenuts are strung on their stiff stalks to provide light for celebrations or feasts. When the tree is young, the network that holds the leaves has a beautiful silver color, as fine and glossy as India paper. Narrow strips of it are used as hair decorations and contrast beautifully with the black and shiny hair of the girls. As it ages, this matting resembles coarse cotton cloth and is used to wrap food, or is made into bags and even rough clothing, especially for fishermen.

The white flowers are small and grow along a branching stalk, sheltered by a sheath, just above where the leaves start. From them, they make the coconut brandy that helps the locals forget their troubles. Flowers and nuts at every stage of growth are found on the same tree, with a year passing between the first bloom and the mature nut. Long before it’s ripe, but after it has reached full size, the nut holds a pint or even a quart of tasty juice, referred to as milk, water, or wine in different languages. It’s clear like spring water, has a subtle acidity, and is sweet, and you can’t compare its taste to the half-rancid liquid found in the ripe nuts sold in Europe or America. It needs to be consumed soon after being picked from the tree to fully appreciate its flavors and must be collected at a growth stage called koie, when there’s no pulp inside the shell.

Not long after this, the pulp, pure white like snow and resembling the white of a soft-boiled egg, forms a thin layer around the inside of the nut. This is a tasty food, and it’s used to make a variety of dishes, puddings, and cakes. It’s nothing like the shredded coconut you find in stores, just as a freshly picked peach is nothing like canned fruit.

The pulp hardens and thickens over time, eventually becoming an inch thick. Sometimes, when the meat is hard and ripe, it is grilled and eaten. I like it pretty well when it's served this way.

If left on the tree, the nut will eventually fall, and in time, a remarkable process of germination begins within it. A sweet, whitish sponge forms inside, starting from the inner end of the seed that’s enclosed in the kernel, opposite one of the three eyes at the smaller end of the nut. This sponge soaks up all the liquid and fills the inside, melting the hard meat, absorbing it, and transforming it into a cellular substance, while a strong, white bud pushes its way through one of the eyes of the shell, burrowing through several inches of husk until it reaches the air and light.

This bud now opens up with green leaves, and around the same time, two other buds, starting from the same point, make their way towards the other two eyes and break through them, pushing down instead of up, forcing their way through the old husk outside the shell and entering the ground. Even though no knife could slice through the shell, the life inside breaks it open, and both the husk and shell decompose, nourishing the soil around the new roots, which, in just five or six years, have grown into a tree eight or nine feet tall, itself producing nuts to reproduce their kind again.

All around me on the rich soil, among the decaying leaves and lush vines, I noticed these nuts, continuing their mysterious and powerful life in the unnoticed depths of the forest. Here and there, a half-domesticated pig was poking at one with its snout. These pigs, which we often consider dumb, actually understand that the sun will make a sprouting nut open up sooner, so they roll the fallen nut into the sunlight to speed up their meal, even though with a little effort they can reach the meat with their teeth.

There’s also a crab here that could teach even the smartest, sunbathing pig some lessons in economics. He’s the ultimate expert on adapting to his environment, with an impressive knowledge that makes those who don’t know look skeptically at the storyteller. These crabs climb coconut trees to get their favorite food. They absolutely love coconuts, especially the ripe, meaty ones. They manage to enjoy them through various strategies that require strength, cleverness, and a clear understanding of what happens when they hit something hard and the speed caused by gravity. Nuts that are hard to crack, they take to great heights to drop and break open their shells.

These crabs are known scientifically as Birgos latro, called tupa by the Marquesans, kaveu by the Paumotans, and ua vahi haari by the Tahitians. It was always entertaining during my walks in the Paumotas to watch these large creatures, light brown or reddish in color, over two feet long, moving around with their bodies a foot off the ground, supported by two pairs of central legs. They can survive at least twenty-four hours without going to the water, as they store a supply in reservoirs on both sides of the cephalothorax to keep their gills moist.

They live in large, deep burrows in the coconut groves, which they fill with husks, so the locals often raid them for a quick supply of fuel. These dens are designed for a quick escape when chased. As frightening as they look when caught off guard on land, they quickly scurry for safety either to a hole or to the sea, moving with surprising speed for such an awkward-looking creature. Although they can be seen at all hours of the day, they only venture out to gather coconuts at night.

Darwin first encountered these creatures in the Indian Ocean and noted that they go to the sea every night to moisten their gills. The young are born and live for a while on the shore, only straying far from the water as they get older. Darwin remarked that their ability to get into the coconut “is as curious a case of instinct as has ever been heard of, and also shows adaptation in structure between two objects that seem so unrelated in nature, like a crab and a coconut tree.”

When night falls and everything is calm, the robber crab climbs the tree by gripping the bark with its claws. My electric flashlight has often spotted it high above me against the gray palm tree. Height doesn't intimidate it. It will go up until it reaches the nuts, even if it's a hundred feet. Using its powerful pincers, it cuts the stem, always picking a nut that is large and ripe. As it comes down the palm, it tears off the fibrous husk, which at first glance seems impossible for it to do. It breaks it down fiber by fiber, starting from the end with the three eye-holes. With those exposed, it starts hammering on one of them until it has made the opening big enough to insert one of the sharp points of its claw. By moving its claw back and forth, it scoops out the meat and enjoys a luxurious meal.

This is his easiest approach, going for the path of least resistance, but if the nut proves difficult, he grabs it with a claw and smashes it against a rock until he breaks it. If that doesn't work, he will take the stubborn nut back to the top of the tree and drop it onto the ground to crack it open. And if he doesn’t succeed at first, he will keep going back up with the husked nut, dropping it again and again until it finally shatters and is open for him to eat.

It’s said that if you put a drop of oil on the long, delicate antennae of these crabs, they die almost immediately. There’s a similar rumor about salt and a bird’s tail. Robber crabs hardly ever hang around long enough to get oiled, so people look for other ways to get rid of them or at least protect against their thefts. Along with the rat, which bites the flower and gnaws on the young nuts, this crab is a main enemy of the planter. Tree owners who can afford it nail sheets of tin or zinc around the tree about twelve feet off the ground. Neither the rat nor the crab can climb this slippery barrier, which offers no grip for their claws. Thousands of trees are protected this way, but usually, these trees belong to white men because tin is expensive and the locals are poor.

The clever native, however, has another way of protecting the fruit of his groves. He climbs the palm tree during the day and wraps it with dirt and leaves about forty feet up. As he lays down on his mat for the night, he smiles, thinking about the revenge he will get. The crab climbs up and gets past the small barrier to pick his nuts, but when he tries to come down, he forgets the weird bump he just went over and, when he hits it again, thinks he’s back on the ground. He lets go and crashes onto the rocks that his crafty enemy has stacked below.

Visit to Le Moine; the story of Paul Gauguin; his home, and a search for his grave beneath the white cross of Calvary.

I woke up one morning from my Golden Bed to find a stranger quietly smoking a cigarette on my paepae. Against the jungle backdrop, he looked like an odd sight; a Frenchman, small and thin, dressed neatly in faded blue denim and shiny high boots. His blue eyes sparkled above a well-groomed beard, and as he stood to greet me, I noticed that the fingers holding the cigarette were long, slender, and fidgety.

This was Monsieur Charles le Moine, the painter from Vait-hua, whose studio I had entered while he was away from that lovely island. We spent a long time over breakfast, enjoying coffee and cigarettes; I was captivated by his conversation, and he was eager to hear about the world he had left behind. He had studied in Paris, served as the governor of the Gambier Islands, and ultimately settled among the palms and orchids of these remote islands. His life had become focused on his paintings, through which he tried to capture the Marquesan atmosphere and character, along with its beauty and wild allure.

I told him it was a shame that many great painters didn't come here to capture the fading beauty and charm of the Marquesas on canvas.

“Our craft is too limited,” he replied with a sigh. “A society based on money doesn’t give its artists and musicians the freedom they once had in these islands, my friend. We’re stuck on a wheel that keeps spinning endlessly. Who can come from France and live here without money? I have to work as a police officer and teacher just to be able to paint even here. One great painter lived in this valley and died here—Paul Gauguin. He was a master, my friend!”

“Paul Gauguin lived here?” I exclaimed. I knew, of course, that the great modernist had died in the Marquesas, but I had never heard in which valley, and no one in Atuona had mentioned him. In Florence, I met an artist who owned two glass doors taken from Madame Charbonnier's house, which were said to have been painted by Gauguin in exchange for rent. I had been in Paris when all of artistic France was either shuddering or going wild over Gauguin's vibrant tropical work, as his massive, rough figures done in bold colors, filled with dark energy, had become the talk of galleries and bars.

Strindberg wrote about Gauguin's first exhibition and expressed his discontent with the artist's obsession with form and the wild models he selected. Gauguin's response was:

“Your civilization is your sickness; my primitive way of life is my healing. I’m a savage. Every human creation reveals something about the individual. Everything I’ve learned from others has held me back. I know a little, but what I do know is truly mine.”

Now I learned from Le Moine that this guy had lived and died in my own valley of Atuona, and maybe even sat on this paepae where we were having breakfast. My imagination sparked at the thought. “I’ll take you to his house,” said Le Moine.

We walked down the road past the governor's palace until we reached the dreary place where Baufré lived, a few hundred yards away from a stone wall, sunken in the swamp. For ten years, this had been Gauguin's home and studio. Now, only a few faint signs of it remained, quickly fading under the jungle overgrowth.

While we stood in the shade of a coconut palm, looking at these, we were joined by Baufré, the unkempt and alcohol-soaked Frenchman, in his ripped and dirty overalls.

“This weather is terrible,” said Baufré, with a curse. “It’s not like it used to be. The world is falling apart. There were seven hundred people in Atuona when I arrived. Now only two hundred are left, and there’s no one to help me on my plantation. If I offer three francs a day, they won’t work. If I offer five francs, they still won’t work. What if I give them rum? They’ll work hard for that because it helps them forget, but when they drink rum they can’t work at all.”

“But you’re a philosopher, and absinthe or rum will fix you,” said Le Moine.

“My God! I'm not a philosopher!” Baufré shot back. “What good is that? Gauguin was a philosopher, and he's dead and buried on Calvary. Do you know how he suffered? His feet and legs were really messed up. Every day he had to wrap them up. He couldn’t wear shoes, but he painted, drank absinthe, and injected morphine into his belly, and kept painting.

“Wow! He was really brave! Haven't I been here for over thirty years, and have I ever met someone like Gauguin? He never stressed out. He just painted. The dealer in Paris sent him five hundred francs a month, and he gave away everything. All he cared about was paint. And now he's gone. Look, this is where his house used to be.”

We walked through the tangled grass that outlined the fertile soil in the shape of the house where Gauguin had painted.

It had been raised six feet above the marsh on tree trunks and measured about forty-five feet long and twenty feet wide. The floor was made of planks, and you had to climb a staircase to reach the veranda. The house's frame was wooden, but the sides were all made of split bamboo, featuring a row of glass windows and a roof of coconut thatch. Light came in from the north, and aside from a small bedroom and a closet for supplies, the whole place served as a studio—a spacious, breezy hall with high windows that let in light but blocked out the harsh sunlight, while the bamboo structure filtered the winds as they endlessly drifted from south to north and back again.

Below the floor, on the ground, was a sculpture workshop, which Gauguin was really interested in. He worked with clay and wood, using wood for both bas-relief and full relief. However, Baufré mentioned that Gauguin was limited by the lack of flexibility in the local clay. Next to this workshop was a shelter for the horse and cart, as Gauguin had the only wheeled vehicle in the Marquesas.

Baufré used up all his words and wrote on four sheets of paper in his attempt to get me to appreciate the surroundings of the artist, who he clearly regarded as a great man.

“Five hundred francs a month, my friend, whether he painted or not! But he was a hard worker. Drunk or sober, he would paint. Yes, I’ve seen him after having a bottle of absinthe, and he would still be painting. Early in the morning, he was at his easel in the studio or under the trees, and he painted every day until the light faded. The only purpose of the cart was to take him and his easel and chair to the scenes he wanted to paint. He would shoot that damn morphine into his stomach when the pain got too bad, and he would drink wine, talk, and paint.

“He had no wife or girlfriend, but he occasionally took one in the way that white men do. He lived alone, except for a half-Chinese boy who cooked and cleaned for him. He never admitted to being sick. There was no doctor on the island because the government was then at Nuka-hiva, and he didn't have time to go there. He suffered a lot, but he never complained. ‘Life is short,’ he would say, ‘and there isn't much time to paint.’”

“He wouldn't discuss politics, but after the lights went out, he would sit at the organ in his studio and move you to tears with his music. At home, he only wore a pareu, but he would put on pants when he went out. He worked, drank, and injected his morphine, and one morning when the boy arrived, he found him dead, still smiling.

“The government despised him because he criticized it for not allowing the locals to keep their traditions. The church loathed him because he mocked it. Still, they buried him in the Catholic cemetery. I went with the body, and four Marquesans carried it up the trail."

“The government sold his house to Gedge, and Gedge sold it to a local, who tore it down for the materials. It was of no use to anyone, because it was built for an artist."

You know, my boy, I'm not familiar with pictures and have only ever seen his, but I felt they were good. They made you feel the sun. They captured the essence of these islands. And you know that Polish guy with the monocle who lives in Papeete, that Krajewsky? Well! he was here looking to buy those stone images of gods, and he said that in Paris they were paying tens of thousands of francs for those Gauguin pieces he would have given me if I asked. Ah well! He was smart and a thinker, but he lies up there in Calvary.

“Maybe,” said Le Moine.

My friend, said the shaggy man, I go to church, and you, me, and Gauguin are all the same kind of Catholic. We don't do what we pray for. That guy was smarter than either of us, and the good God will forgive him for whatever he did. He paid everyone, and Chassognal of Papeite found seven hundred francs in a book where he had carelessly left it. If he drank, he shared it, and he paid his women.

“He was an atheist,” Le Moine insisted.

“Atheist!” Baufré shouted. “He believed in creating beautiful art, and he wasn’t afraid of God or the mission. How can you say what God likes? Mathieu Scallamera built the church here and the mission houses, and he’s dead, and all his family have leprosy. Did God cause that? No! No! You and I don’t know anything about that. You like to drink. Your woman is tattooed, and we’re both men and not good. Want to grab a drink?”

We left him by the road and walked slowly under the arch of trees toward the mountain with the white cross of the Calvary graveyard at its peak.

“He drank a lot, he used morphine, he was seriously ill, and still, he painted. Those guys who need relaxation and fancy tools could learn from him,” said Le Moine. “He was a pagan, and he viewed nature through the eyes of a pagan god, and he painted it just as he saw it.”

I reminded him of James Huneker's words about Gauguin: “He is still, for most people, the Paint God of the Twentieth century. Painting was his passion. Despite his realism, he was a symbolist, a master of decoration.”

Past the governor's mansion, we turned sharply up the hill. Apart from all other houses, on a rise, stood a Marquesan house. As we followed the steep path past it, I called, “Kaoha!”

“Where are you going?” said a woman, “To Calvary?”

There was a sad surprise in her voice that we would make the difficult journey up to the cemetery where none of our loved ones were buried.

A wide path curved around the hill, the path that the deceased and their mourners walk, and it led through a large coconut orchard, where the trees were planted in perfect symmetry, lifting their swaying fronds seventy or eighty feet into the air. There was no underbrush between the tall gray trunks of the palms; only a tangle of vegetation covered the ground, and the red volcanic earth of the trail, cutting through the greenery, looked like a smear of blood.

The road was long and hot. Stopping near the top, we looked up, and I was filled with emotion like when I saw the group of the crucifixion in the courtyard. A forty-foot high cross, with Christ nailed to it, all white, stood against the deep blue sky. It was like a note from an organ in the vast gray cathedral of the palm trees.

Another forty minutes of climbing brought us to the base of the white symbol. A half-acre enclosed by whitewashed fences, like any rural graveyard, sat on top of the mountain.

To find Gauguin's grave, we started at the entrance and searched row by row. The graves belonged to locals, with mounds marked by small stones along the sides, featuring rusted iron crosses with skulls and other symbols of death, and names painted in white, fading away. Further along were stone and cement tombs, primitive and massive, standing strong against the elements. On one was inscribed, “Ci Git Daniel Vaimai, Kata-Kita, 1867–1907. R.I.P.” This was the grave of a catechist, a local assistant to the priests. Below another lay “August Jorss,” the one who had ordered the Golden Bed where I slept. The most striking of all was a mausoleum surrounded by a tall, black iron railing brought from France. I climbed onto it to read while balancing on the points:

“Here lies Mg. Illustrissime and Reverendissime Rog. Jh. Martin,” and much more in Latin and French. It was the grand grave of the Bishop of Uranopolis, vicar-apostolic to the Marquesas, predecessor to Bishop le Cadre, who was humble and whom everyone called plain Father David.

Suddenly, rain poured down on us, and searching for shelter, we noticed a straw roof over a new and empty grave surrounded by stones. We huddled beneath it, facing the sea, and while the heavy rain splashed above us and water flowed down the slope, we silently admired the stunning view below.

We were right above the Bay of Traitors, that stretch of sea that curved into the small bays of Taka-Uka and Atuona. On one side, a jagged peak barely visible through the mist, was the rugged head of Temetiu, with the dark depths of the valleys he oversees spread out below him. In the foreground, the coconut trees, from the rocky cliffs to the gate of Calvary, stood like an army holding victory palms. In rows and circles, patches and clusters, the gray trunks lined up from the sea to the mountains, bending to the storm, swaying gently, and by some trick of the wind and rain, appearing to march toward the summit crowned with a cross.

The weak thatch we were huddled under, just there to keep the sun off the grave-digger, sagged to the north and south and looked like it might fly away. But suddenly, the rain stopped in an instant, as if it had somewhere else to be, and the sun shone even brighter in the freshly washed air.

We kept searching, but it was pointless. Hohine and Mupui had signs marking their final resting places, but not Gauguin. We found an earring on a small grave where a mother had buried her child, and on several others, those couronnes des perles, stiff, ugly wreaths brought from France, with “Sincere Regrets” in raised beads, expressing the heartfelt desire of the simple islanders to honor their loved ones' memory. But Gauguin's grave, the great painter's, was unmarked. If there was a board at its head when he was buried, it had rotted away, leaving nothing to show where he was laid to rest.

The hibiscus was a deep red on the sunken graves, and coconuts were growing in the tangled grass. Palms that were shut out from the half-acre had dropped their nuts inside it, and the soil, enriched with human ashes, was trying to produce more beautiful things than headstones and iron crosses. The pahue, a lovely, long, creeping vine that crawls along the beaches to the edge of the tides, had spread over many graves, and its flowers, like morning glories, hung their purple bells on the neglected spots that no one bothered to clear.

Perhaps underneath this is the dust of the painter who, more than anyone else, made the Marquesas known to the world in Europe.

Death of Aumia; funeral songs and burial traditions; reasons for the death of a people.

On the paepae of a rundown cabin close to mine lived two women, Aumia and Taipi, who were in the final stages of tuberculosis. Just a few months earlier, Aumia had been the most beautiful woman on the island.

“She was one of the happiest,” said Haabunai, “but the pokoko has taken her.”

She was painfully thin when I first saw her, lying all day on a pile of mats, with Taipi next to her, both of them coughing. An outbreak of colds had hit Atuona, likely brought in by the schooner Papeite, since no other ship had arrived since the Morning Star. Aumia coughed at night, her neighbor caught it, and soon, like laughter in a classroom, it became impossible to ignore; the valley echoed with those distressing sounds down to the beach and up to the hills. A breadfruit season ago, Aumia had coughed for the first time, and at this rate, many of my neighbors would soon follow.

I stopped every day to have a quick chat with Aumia and to bring her the jam or marmalade she liked but couldn’t afford to buy from the trader's store. Today, she asked me if I had seen her grave. She had heard that I visited the cemetery, and she wanted me to describe it to her. It was the grave where Le Moine and I had huddled together to escape the storm.

Aumia's husband and Haabunai, along with Great Fern, had dug and paved it a couple of days ago, and her husband had given everyone a pig for their work, slaughtering it at the tomb of the Bishop of Uranopolis. No thought of disrespect had crossed their minds; it was practical to lay the pig over the impressive monument, with a man on either side holding the animal and the butcher working freely. The carcass had been stripped of its hair in a bucket of hot water and buried underground with fire both below and above it. When the meat was fully cooked, I had a piece, and Sister Serapoline, who had come in her black nun's habit to comfort Aumia with the church's promises, ate with us and accepted a leg for the nun's house.

“Aumia can eat pork, and yet they’ve made her grave,” I said.

“Oh, that's right!” replied the nun, holding the haunch carefully. “That’s the custom. They always used to dig graves near the house so that the sick person could see it, and they had a lot to say during the digging, enjoying it. Now, thank God! if they’re Catholics, they’re buried in consecrated ground where the body can rest peacefully until the trumpet sounds for the final judgment. Death is awful, but these Marquesans treat it no differently than a journey to another island, and much less seriously than a trip to Tahiti. They die as peacefully as a good Catholic who knows they’re going to get their crown in Heaven. And since they’re just children, all of them, the wisest or the worst, God will know how to account for their sins. It’s those who lead them astray who will pay dearly, those wicked whites who have turned away from God, or who worship him in false temples.”

The coffin of Aumia was next to the house, flipped over so the rain wouldn't make it look bad. She had requested it weeks earlier. To the Marquesan, his coffin is as significant as the house that the newly married couple will live in, for us. These people understand that nearly every inch of their land contains the bones or ashes of a corpse, and this remnant of a race, burdened by tragedy, sees death merely as a relief from the oppression of foreign and unsympathetic white people. They approach the land of the tupapaus as calmly as they would go to sleep.

“I have never seen a Marquesan afraid to die,” said Sister Serapoline. “I have been with many of them in their final moments. Dying is a terrible thing, but they feel no fear at all.”

The husband of Aumia, a cheerful guy in his thirties, was playing the drums to entertain his wife. He mentioned that his grandfather's body, a chief, had been oiled and kept in their home until it became mummified. He explained that this was quite the tradition. The body was thoroughly washed and rubbed with coconut oil. It was laid out in the sun, with family members assigned to turn it multiple times a day to ensure even heating. The oiling process was repeated several times every day. After weeks or months of this treatment, the body was mummified, and if it belonged to a chief, it was placed in his canoe and kept ceremonially for years. No markers were ever put to indicate where the dead were buried, and there were no funeral ceremonies. It was better that no one knew where the body was laid, and that the trusted friends who took it to the grave forgot the location.

In ancient times, the Marquesans would secretly bury their dead at night at the base of tall trees. They would also take the bodies to the mountains and hide them in rocky holes shaded by trees, covering them up and making the grave blend in with the surrounding soil. The location of the burial site was kept completely secret. Aumia's husband shared a story about a man who, on the darkest night, climbed a seemingly unreachable cliff with the body of his young wife strapped to his back, carefully placing her on a high ledge before descending safely.

These precautions likely stemmed from a fear of desecrating the dead, possibly from the concern that they could be consumed by a victorious enemy. Every invading tribe aimed to destroy the cemeteries and temples of their foes. It was believed that mutilating a corpse harmed the soul that had departed from it.

Afraid of no living enemy or the sea, facing the shark in its own territory and defeating it, bravely enduring the stab of the deadly spear when a battle accident left him unprotected, the Marquesan warrior, just like the youngest child, had an indescribable fear of their own dead and burial sites, as well as the spirits that lingered around them.

Christianity hasn’t changed this, because it too is weighed down by such fears. Who among us isn’t scared to walk past a graveyard at night, even if we pretend we’re not? Banshees, werewolves, and devils, the blessed candles lit to keep away evil spirits, or even to protect us from wandering souls on certain days for the dead, were all part of my childhood. Similarly, for the Marquesan, there are goblins that make him refuse to enter quiet places alone at night, often causing him to hide in fear on his mats, a pareu over his head, terrified of the unknown.

But death, when it comes to him now, feels like nothing, or just like falling asleep after a long, sad day. Aumia, enjoying her burial foods and gazing happily at her coffin, which her husband had crafted with care and skill, smiled at me as peacefully as a child. But the sad sound of her coughing trailed behind me as I made my way to the House of the Golden Bed.

It was just getting light the next morning when I woke up, a gentle, pleasant breeze rustling the breadfruit leaves. I jumped into the river, and when I came back to my house, I was about to get dressed—that is, to put on my pareu—when a scream came from the forest. It was sudden, piercing, and filled with pain.

“Aumia is dead and gone below” said Exploding Eggs, walking over to start the fire. He literally meant, “Aumia is dead and gone below,” because the Marquesans believe the spirit world is beneath the earth's surface, just like they think the soul is below the belt.

The crying was soon joined by the sound of pounding on wood.

“The corpse goes into the coffin,” said Exploding Eggs. The first nail had been hammered in just after Aumia's last breath.

All day, the neighborhood felt sad with the cries coming from the house. All the wailing had a similar tone, as if played on the same instrument by the hand of sorrow. Each visitor to the house cried out in the same way, and everyone there joined in, creating a chorus of loud wails and moans that filled my ears for ten minutes after each new mourner arrived. I had never witnessed such a heartbreaking display of grief.

But the sadness of Aumia's friends wasn't real. It couldn't be; it was too theatrical. When they left the house, the mourners laughed and lit cigarettes and pipes. If no new visitor arrived, they chatted and smoked, but the sight of a fresh and untroubled person set them off again in their automatic, though nerve-wracking, wail.

I knew Aumia well, and at noon, wanting to be respectful, I stepped onto the paepae of her home.

“She loved the Menike!” shouted the old women in unison, and they rushed at me, sniffing me as if I were one of the deceased’s husbands. They followed me up the path to my cabin and sat on my paepae wailing and crying. It took me a while to understand that their deep sadness was meant to draw comfort from me. There was not a sound of mourning as the rum was passed around.

I was confused by how they kept repeating their cry. As distressing as it was, the sounds were almost like going through the alphabet. A woman who had taken me in as her nephew said they called it the “Ue haaneinei,” which literally means “to make a weeping on the side.” The rules around it were complicated and specific. Each vowel was remembered perfectly. It went, as my adopted aunt recited it over her shell of comfort, like this:

“Ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke! A a a a a a a a a a a a a a! E e e e e e e e e e e e e e e! I i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i! O o o o o o o o o o o o o o o! U u u u u u u u u u u u u u u!”

To leave out a vowel, to say too many, or to mix them up would be disrespectful to the spirit of the dead and a reflection on the person grieving. Nine times "ke," fourteen "a's," fifteen "e's," eighteen "i's," and fifteen "o's" and "u's."

Aumia was taken to Calvary in the afternoon and laid to rest in the grave for which the pig had been paid. The old sentiment was so powerful that only three or four of her friends could be convinced by the nuns to follow the coffin up the trail.

Exploding Egg's shipment of Aumia to Hawaii, the underworld, clearly reflected how strongly his people held onto their old beliefs about the spirit's fate after death. They share a belief in an underground afterlife with the Ainos of Japan—a group they're quite similar to, as they belong to the same branch of humanity.

Doesn't Socrates, in Plato's dialogues, often talk about "going to the underworld," where he hopes to discover true wisdom?

Havaii or Havaiki is, of course, the legendary place where the Polynesians originated, as well as the name for the underworld where their spirits go after death. One might see this as a vague understanding from the Marquesan perspective of “From dust he came, to dust returneth,” or more likely, a deep yearning of the exiled people for the homeland they left behind. Ethnologists think that the name refers to Java, the stopover point for the great migration of Caucasians from South Asia towards Polynesia and New Zealand, or to Savaii, a Samoan island where the emigrants later spread out.

Whatever the origin of the word, today it only suggests to the Marquesan people that unclear space where the dead go. In this place, there’s no suffering for good or bad souls. It is simply where the dead reside. It is governed by Po, the Darkness.

There is, however, a paradise on an island in the clouds, where beautiful girls and big bowls of kava, along with perfectly roasted pigs, await the good and brave. The old priests claimed they could guide a person from Po to this happy place, but the living relatives of the departed spirit had to pay a heavy price for their help. The Christianized Marquesan believes he sees these old beliefs come back to life when Père David talks about purgatory, where prayers and certain good deeds can aid one's friends or can be saved up in advance for the day when one must enter that middle state of souls.

All Marquesans live in the shadow of that day. They face it without fear, but with a sadness so tragic and profound that the grief of it is beyond words.

“I have seen many go like Aumia has gone,” Father David said to me. “All these wonderful cultures are fading away. All of Polynesia is disappearing. One day, the white people here will be left alone among the remains of plantations and homes, unless they bring in another race to fill the void left by those who have died.”

A hundred years ago, there were one hundred sixty thousand Marquesans in these islands. Twenty years ago, there were four thousand. Today, I believe there are not even two thousand one hundred left.

A hundred years ago, an American naval captain counted nineteen thousand fighting men on the island of Nuka-hiva alone. In a valley where three thousand warriors once opposed him, today there are only four adults. I visited Hanamate, an hour from Atuona, where hundreds of locals lived fifty years ago. Not a single one survived to welcome me.

Consumption was the first disease to reach Hanavave, on the island of Fatu-hiva. One of the brutal American whaling captains sent a sailor ashore who was dying of tuberculosis. The tattooed cannibals welcomed him in a Christ-like manner, eased his final hours, and inhaled the germs that have killed off more than four-fifths of their population, and which are still affecting the survivors today.

The white man brought the Chinese, and with them, leprosy. The Chinese were brought in to help the white man take over the native land of the Marquesan, and to keep the Chinese satisfied, opium was also introduced. Seeing that the ignorant native craved it eagerly, the foolish white man imposed this vice on his other desired slave. The French Government, for forty thousand francs, licensed an opium farmer to sell the drug even more quickly, and only when alarmed by the consequences and shamed by the outcry in Europe did it finally ban the devastating narcotic. Too late!

Smallpox arrived on a Peruvian slave ship that took thousands of islanders and forced them to work for white people in their own country. This ship also brought along another terrible disease, which spread through the islands like a fierce epidemic, rather than following the slow, chronic path it takes today now that everyone has been exposed to it.

The healthy Marquesans had no antibodies in their pure blood to fight off the diseases that, for us hardened Europeans and our descendants, are not fatal. Here, they spread rapidly and took hundreds of lives in just a few days or weeks.

The survivors of these epidemics, seeing their homes and villages destroyed, their friends dying, and their people suffering, believed that these misfortunes were caused by the God of the foreigners and by the missionaries, who claimed to be his representatives. In their pain, they not only refused to listen to the gospels but also prayed to their own god, asking to be saved from the missionaries. Often, when the missionaries came to talk to the people, the deformed and dying were brought out and lined up in front of them as proof of the cruelty of their white god.

But after presenting all the clear reasons for the decline of the Marquesas population, there's still another, mysterious, intangible reason that might be more powerful than the others. The arrival of white people has been lethal to all indigenous races around the world. The black, yellow, Malay, Asian, and black communities thrive alongside white people; however, the Polynesian and Native American populations have either died out or are rapidly declining. The number of deaths from war and diseases still doesn’t fully explain these alarming facts. No matter how far you search, accumulating data and causes to prove your point, you still need to consider the shadow of the white on the red.

Prescott says:

The Native American has a uniquely sensitive nature. He instinctively pulls away from the harsh touch of an outside hand. Even when this outside influence comes as progress, he seems to wilt and fade beneath it. This has also been true for the Mexicans. Under Spanish rule, their population has quietly declined. Their spirit has been crushed. They live under better laws, more secure peace, and a purer faith. But none of this really changes anything. Their culture was tough and suited for the wilderness. Their strong values were entirely their own. They refused to conform to European culture or to be mixed with a foreign lineage.

Free! Understand this well; it’s the fundamental commandment, whether it’s dim or clear, of our entire existence: to be free. Freedom is the ultimate goal, whether pursued wisely or foolishly, of all human struggles, hard work, and sufferings in this world.

I believe that the Polynesians, from Hawaii to Tahiti, are fading away because their sense of play has been stifled, an instinct that was reflected in many of their traditions and activities. Their dancing, tattooing, chanting, religious ceremonies, and even their battles had clear elements of humor and joy. They were fundamentally a joyful people, full of drama, emotional depth, and a strong sense of the absurd. The traders' dominance suppressed all these native emotions.

To this restriction was added the struggle to survive. With the whole Marquesan economic and social system thrown off balance, food was harder to find, and they were forced to work due to orders, taxes, fines, and the enticing but deadly pull of rum and opium. The white people taught the men to sell their lives and the women to sell their attractiveness.

Happiness and health were ruined because the white man came here just to satisfy his greed. The priests couldn’t provide enough inspiration to overcome the damage caused by the traders. The Marquesan noticed that Jesus had little impact on their leaders. Civilization missed its chance because it offered teachings, but no real example.

Even today, one white man in a valley sets the standard for sobriety, kindness, and honor. Jensen, the straightforward and attractive Dane who works for the Germans at Taka-Uka and claims he will never go back to civilization after being in the breadline in New York, told me that when he ran a store in Hanamenu, near Atuona, to serve the small number of unexterminated tribesmen there, the locals copied him in everything—his clothes, his gestures, even his most casual actions.

“I was the only white person. I planted a fern in a box. Everyone came to my store and, pretending it was for other reasons, asked for boxes. Soon every paepae had its box of ferns. I asked a guy to catch four or five goats for me in the hills. They were the first goats tied up or kept in the valley. Within a week, the mountains were being scoured for goats, and the village was loud with their bleating. I ate my goats; they ate theirs. Not one was left. When I left Hanamenu, the whole population moved with me. Sure, I treated them well; that was all.

“I never want to see the white man's country again. I've starved in the big cities and worked like a dog for the banana trust in the West Indies. I've begged for a cup of coffee in San Francisco and got hit with a cop's club. Here, I make almost nothing, I have a lot of friends and no bosses, and I'm happy.”

Had these lovable savages had a few good people to guide them, to protect them from the harsh realities of civilization that had piled on them for a century, they might have evolved into an incredible race that could have impressed and benefited Europe with their beauty, courage, and natural strength.

They didn't need any physical renewal. They were born into health and purity—intense as some of their traditions were—better than most of us. Their bodies weren't a burden on their souls; instead, they were light, strong, and free, fully integrated with them. They weren't even aware of their bodies; they just jumped, danced, and splashed in and out of the sea, part of a big, joyful, and harmonious universe.

If you could take that amazing, almost perfect physical foundation that nature provided the Marquesans, along with their sweet simplicity, generosity, and the trust that everyone who knows them recognizes, and add to it the knowledge we have gained; if they could have received well-rounded and informed intelligence through example and kindness, just imagine what life in these islands would be like!

All they needed was a brother who stepped into the light and guided them.

A wild dance, a story of the ocean, filled with risk and celebration; the assault on the lettuce.

Drums were pounding all morning, exciting the valley and mountains with their raw boom-boom. The wild rhythm got the blood pumping, bringing back memories older than humanity, awakening primal instincts. Toho's eyes sparkled, and her toes flexed like a cat’s as she explained that the afternoon would feature an ancient dance, a performance about the sea, war, and feasting just like the islands had experienced before the white people arrived.

The air vibrated with the sound of the drums. All morning, I sat alone on my paepae, listening to their beat. The sound took you back to the days when men first stretched animal skins over hollow tree trunks and played them to summon the naked tribes under the oaks of England. Those powerful drums struck by the hands of Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale made you crave the wild, to throw a spear, to dance in the moonlight.

Erase thirty years, and listen to it in Atuona when the "talking long pig" was being carried through the jungle to the dark High Place! Back then, it was the thunder of the heavens, the voices of the old gods craving the flesh of their enemies.

We, who have become sophisticated and varied in our musical expression, using many instruments to convey our nuanced emotions, cannot understand the primal and savage thrill that flows through the veins when the war drum beats. For the Marquesans, it has always been a call to action, an inspiration for bold and violent deeds, the summons of the war gods, the madness of the dance. Born from thunder, speaking with the voice of the storm and the waterfall, it awakens in man the beast with twitching nostrils and a whip-like tail who is part of the forest and the night.

Music is always a reflection of the moods and values of its time. The bugle and the fife, along with the drum, inspire martial spirit in our armies today, but for our ancient ancestors, the drum was the most important. Primitive humans expressed their connection with nature by mimicking its sounds. They would strike their own bodies or a hollow log covered in skin. Uncivilized people crack their fingers, snap their thighs, or hit the ground with their feet to create music for spontaneous dancing. In Tonga, they crack their fingers; in Tahiti, they pound the ground with their feet; here in Atuona, they clap their hands. The Marquesans also have bamboo drums, which are long sections of hollow reeds that are slit and beat with sticks. For calling boats and signaling, they use conch shells, the same ones that sounded when “the Tritons blew their wreathed horn.” They also have the jew's-harp, an instrument found throughout Polynesia; sometimes it's a strip of bark held between the teeth, other times a wooden bow strung with gut.

Civilization is about making life more complex and nuanced. We have the piano, the violin, and the orchestra. Yet we also have ragtime, which reacts to the stress of American commercial life, swinging back to the old times when humans, despite being rough around the edges, were free. There’s a sense of release and excitement in the raw, syncopated songs and in the energetic movements of the jazz dances with their wild and passionate expressions, their uninhibited rhythms, and their direct appeal to desire. These ragtime tunes, originating from the jungles of Africa through the Black community, tap into instincts in people that get suppressed in big cities, in factories, in slums, and in the exhausting grind of business.

So in the dance, my Marquesan neighbors went back to their old traditions and expressed feelings that were fading under the control of foreign rulers. By making light of their sacred tapus, showing that their gods had no power, and ending their tribal way of life, the dance lost its meaning. They didn’t feel like dancing anymore since their joy in life was gone. But the new and cheerful governor, looking for entertainment, wanted to bring it back for his enjoyment. So the drums were beating on the palace lawn, and by afternoon, the paths were lively with pareus and bright shawls as the locals came down from their paepaes to the government seat.

Chief Kekela Avaua, the adopted son of the late Kekela and leader of the Paamau district, summoned me. He was a dignified and significant man at forty-five, sporting attractive tattoos on his legs and Dundreary whiskers. He was dressed quite stylishly in brown linen, with his bare, grasping-toed feet visible beneath.

Kirio Patuhamane, an impressive figure covered in ink marks from head to toe, who had Burnside whiskers, an English cricket cap, and a bright red loincloth, walked with us down the road.

A hundred locals were sitting in the palace garden, and rum and wine were being served when we got there. Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale, the guy who was sentenced for making palm brandy, were back to handing out drinks and took a glass frequently. The atmosphere had warmed up since the dance at the governor's inauguration. As Kirio Patuhamane explained, they had been waiting to see how their new ruler would act; the last one had been harsh, giving out rum only for his own benefit, and had a wife who looked down on them.

My tan-skinned female friends really resented the attitudes of superiority from white women, and there were plenty of cold looks shot by Malicious Gossip, Apporo, and Flower at the stiffly dressed Madame Bapp, who sat on the porch sipping absinthe. They looked down on her because she would beat her husband if he so much as glanced at one of them, even though he owned a store and wanted their business. Poor Madame Bapp! She thought her little man was quite appealing, and she lived in misery because of the openly flaunted charms of his customers. She loved him, and whenever she got jealous, she'd reach for the absinthe bottle and soon be busy with the whip and broom on the poor Bapp, who tried to escape. It was pointless; she had locked the doors and windows, and he was bound to face a painful punishment, all while the dishes shattered and the whole Atuona Valley listened from their paepaes, laughing and well aware that the little man hadn’t done anything to provoke her jealousy.

She greeted me with chilly politeness when I stepped onto the veranda, and the governor was serving glasses of “Dr. Funk,” a drink famous throughout the South Seas. Its secret is simply mixing a strong shot of absinthe with lemonade or limeade. The educated guy who introduced this potent drink to thirsty travelers was a friend of Stevenson and cared for him during his final illness. I’m not sure if Dr. Funk ever made his signature drink for R.L.S., but his own reputation has spread, not as a healer, but as a drink mixer, from Samoa to Tahiti. “Dr. Funk!” you hear in every club and bar. Experts claim its special benefits include giving a boost to your backbone when you’re exhausted and providing the courage to live for men drained from doing nothing.

The governor, dressed for the occasion, was once again the city’s host, with André Bauda by his side, who had become his close friend and advisor. Bauda had only been on the island for a few months and understood just as little Marquesan as the governor did. Both of them were genuinely welcoming, almost too much so, given my struggle to keep pace with their toasts.

Soon, the demijohn of rum was emptied into the glasses being passed around in the garden; Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale once again called forth the thumping beat of the large drums, and the dance began. This was a tragedy of the sea, a pantomime of danger, conflict, and celebration. For centuries, the ancestors of these dancers had performed it on the Forbidden Height. Even the language in which they chanted was outdated for this generation, its words and meanings lost.

The women sat in a line on the grass, and first, without speaking, they lifted and carried a long canoe from its storage to the beach. The tension in their arms and the movement of their bodies mimicked lifting the heavy boat, walking with its weight, launching it, waiting for the waves and the current that would help them get past the surf line, and then paddling through the choppy water.

Meantime, at a distance, the men sang in unison, keeping a steady rhythm for the dancers and narrating the story of the play with long-forgotten words. The drums thumped until their thunderous sound echoed deep into the valley.

After the canoe was gliding quickly through the water, the women took a break. It felt to me that the low, steady chant of the men reflected a longing for freedom, a desire to return to nature, and a sad reminder of the days of power and liberty that were lost forever. Even though no one there understood the ancient language of the song, words weren't necessary to grasp the meaning of the dance. Without a single word spoken, the movements of the women would have clearly conveyed the story.

When they started again, the sea became more turbulent. Now the men's cries echoed the sound of waves crashing against the canoe and the whistling of the wind. The canoe was tossed high by the crashing waves; it slid unsteadily down into the troughs and swayed as the rowers fought to keep it stable. The squall had turned into a gale, howling at them as they tried to maintain control. The canoe began to fill with water, sinking lower and lower, and in a moment, the rowers were thrown into the ocean. They struggled against the massive waves; they swam; they grabbed onto the canoe; they righted it and climbed back in. The storm calmed down, and the seas settled.

Again the women rested, their arms and bodies glistening with sweat. All this time, they had stayed still from the waist down; their bare legs folded beneath them like those of statues. The men's chant was quieter now, reflecting a memory of the old joy that had been stifled by the constraints of white people, by mockery of island legends, and by the serious condemnations from priests and preachers. Yet it was filled with echoes of days gone by and the people who had once sailed the seas among these islands.

Again the dancers raised their arms, and the canoe glided over the sunny waters. Eventually, it reached an island, carried through the waves to a resting spot on the sand. Its oarsmen celebrated, performing a dance of gratitude to their gods, and wove the ti leaves into their hair.

At that moment, Haabunai, the master of ceremonies, shouted in distress and stopped drumming. With a pained look at the crowd, he ran around the corner of the house, only to come back instantly with his arms full of green leaves.

“My God!” cried the governor. “My salad! My salad!”

Haabunai, caught up in his tasks, had overlooked bringing the real and sacred ti. In a last-minute panic, he raided and completely wrecked the governor's prized lettuce bed, which was the only source of salad-making in Atuona. He quickly shared the valuable leaves among the dancers, and with the wilting lettuce woven into their hair, the oarsmen launched the canoe again into the waves and returned to their own island, praising the gods.

All relaxed now, ready to accept the governor's praises and the full glasses once again offered by the hardworking Haabunai and Song, with help from the gendarme.

A gruesome cannibal chant followed, accompanied by the booming of the drums, and then, fueled by the liquor that ignited their minds, the dancers began the haka, the sexual dance. Energized by the rum, they threw themselves into it with a passion I had never witnessed before, even after seeing a kamaaina in Hawaii and watching Caroline, Miri, and Mamoe, the most skilled dancers from the Hawaiian Islands. As the cup continued to pass around, the hurahura soon became widespread. The men and women who had started dancing in organized rows now broke away and danced freely all over the lawn. Men sought out the women they liked, and women pursued the men, challenging each other in a wild and startling display of the ancient traditions.

The nonstop pounding of the drums fueled the excitement; the grounds of the governor's palace were a chaotic mix of twisting brown bodies and restless pareus, while cries, shouts, hysterical laughter, and the sounds of clapping hands and stomping feet filled the air. Here and there, dancers collapsed from exhaustion, until eventually the dance turned into a duet, with everyone stepping back for Many Daughters, the tiny, beautiful leper, and Kekela Avaua, the chief of Paumau. They left the lawn and moved to the veranda, where the enthusiasm had become so contagious that the governor was doing the hurahura in front of Bauda, and Ah Yu was dancing with Apporo, while Song, the prisoner, and Flag, the gendarme, were trying to imitate the star performers crazily.

Kekela, who led the charge, was a sight to behold. A towering man, around six feet four inches tall and built like a tank, his movements and the way his muscles flexed broke all anatomical rules. Many Daughters, with her big eyes shining and red lips parting, followed and mirrored his every move. Her whole body seemed to turn around her waist, her hips twisting in an almost spiral motion, while her arms on her hips highlighted and balanced her seductive movements.

The governor and the commissioner, Ah Yu and Apporo, Monsieur Bapp with Song of the Nightingale and Flag, made the palace shake while the thrum of the huge drums drove them wild.

Exhausted at last, they lay panting on the floorboards. Song was telling me that the governor's liquor was way better than any of his illegal stuff, and that when his sentence was up, he would stay at the palace as the cook. Ah Yu, in broken English, sang a song he had heard forty years ago in California, “Shoo-fly-don't-bother-me.” Apporo, overwhelmed by the rum and the dancing, was lying among the rose bushes. Many others were sprawled on the grass, while more got back up to dance, singing and shouting for more rum. The girls came forward to be kissed, as was the custom, but Madame Bapp shooed them away with sharp words.

Soon the commotion became too much for the dignity of the governor. He ordered the grounds to be cleared, and Bauda issued commands from the porch while Song and Flag carried away the drums and ushered the excited crowd out of the garden and across the bridge. Overall, this Sunday was typical of Atuona under the new regime.

After a quiet soak in the pool below my cabin, I made my own dinner without any help from Exploding Eggs, and went to bed early to avoid having visitors. The sound of a falling coconut woke me up at midnight, and I saw Apporo, Flower, Water, and Chief Kekela Avaua asleep on my paepae. The chief had draped his trousers over the railing and was wearing his pareu, his decorated legs on display, while the others lay bare on my mats. There was no need to wake them, as it’s a well-respected custom in these friendly islands to sleep wherever one happens to drift off.

The night was beautiful, the stars shone through the breadfruit trees, and Temetiu, the towering mountain, looked striking against the blue and gold sky. Two sheep were snuggled together by my trail window, the horses were resting in the bushes, and a nightingale sang a cheerful love song in the coconut palms above the House of the Golden Bed.

Next morning, everyone in Atuona had a tight handkerchief tied around their forehead. I encountered twenty men and women sporting this mark of repentance. Watercress, the leader of Atuona, who watches over the governor's house, was by the roadside.

“You’ve had too much to drink,” I said, noticing the rag wrapped around his head.

“Not a lot, but quite a bit,” he replied.

“Faufau,” I said again, which means it’s a bad thing.

Hana paopao he said sadly. “Working is unpleasant. One wants to forget a lot of things.”

There was bitterness and sorrow in his voice. His father was a warrior under the protection of Toatahu, the god of chiefs, and led many victorious raids when Watercress was a child. The son remembers those times and feels deeply about the degradation and destruction the whites have brought to his people. A distinguished-looking man, dignified and proud, he was one of a handful working on tax collection by repairing the roads, and he was one of the few who worked diligently, speaking little and rarely smiling.

A walk to the Forbidden Place; Hot Tears, the hunchback; the story of Behold the Servant of the Priest, told by Malicious Gossip in the cave of Enamoa.

It was a sleepy afternoon, and as I walked up the jungle path to my cabin, I saw Le Brunnec, the trader, with Mouth of God and Tahiapii, Malicious Gossip's half-sister.

Le Brunnec, a Breton who was smart, honest, and cheerful, owned the store beneath the governor's palace on the road to Atuona beach. He lived above the shop, alone except for a boy who cooked for him, and all the Marquesans were his friends. He came this afternoon to take me for a walk up Atuona valley, and on the main road below my house, Le Moine, Jimmy Kekela, Hot Tears, the hunchback, and Malicious Gossip were waiting for us.

We waded through the river and found a trail that followed it, crossing it occasionally and sometimes hanging on the steep banks above. The trail had been washed out by floods many times and was rough and rocky, covered with trees and vines. About a hundred feet from the river, there were houses scattered in the nearly continuous forest of coconut and breadfruit trees. Oranges and bananas, mangoes and limes, surrounded the cabins, most of which were made from rough planks and had iron roofs. Here and there, I spotted a native house made of straw mats and thatched with palm leaves, a sign of poverty that couldn't reach the shocking, yet admired, standards of the whites.

Many people sitting on their paepaes called out to us, and one woman pointed at me and said she wanted to take my name and give me hers. This is their custom when they're attracted to someone, but I pretended not to understand. I didn't want to lose a name that had served me well for many years, especially so early in my time in Atuona. Plus, if I took another name, I would have to stick with it and be known by it. It would be nice to be called “Blue Sky” or “Killer of Sharks,” but what if it was “Drowned in the Sea” or “Noise Inside”?

“Keep your name to yourself, my friend,” said Le Moine. “They expect a lot from you if you give them yours. They’ll shower you with pointless gifts, but only you have the right to buy rum.”

Following a curve in the stream, we stumbled upon Teata (Miss Theater), the recognized beauty of Atuona, standing waist-deep in a pool, washing her dresses. She was a sight to behold, with large eyes and tan skin, her hair cascading darkly around her fair face and bare shoulders. The clear water lapped against her slender thighs and created ripples around her, while the lush jungle growth along the banks formed an emerald backdrop to her beauty.

“They're like the ancient Greeks,” Le Moine said, “with the elegance of being used to being naked and the calmness of being barefoot. You shouldn't judge them by today’s European standards, but by the statues of Greece or Egypt. M’a'mselle Theater there in the stream would have been famous in the Golden Age of Pericles. I need to paint her before she gets older. They’re great models because they don't get nervous and can sit in a pose all day, though they don’t like to stand and need their pipe or cigarette. You’ve seen Vanquished Often, in my own valley of Vait-hua, whom I’ve painted so many times. Ah, she is beautiful! You won't find anyone like her in the whole world. Paris doesn’t know anyone like her.”

Teata waved at us from the stream and tossed her long hair over her shoulder as she continued her work. Glancing back at her before the path dipped back into the woods, I noticed that her features, when relaxed, were sharp and somewhat wild. The lines were still beautiful, but they took on a strict and intimidating quality.

We climbed steadily, hopping from rock to rock and grabbing onto the bushes. A mile up the valley, we suddenly came across a plateau and saw in front of us the remnants of an ancient Pekia, or High Place, a bleak and horrifying reminder of the times of wicked gods and man-eaters.

This, in the past, was the paepae tapu, or Forbidden Height, the home of dark and terrifying spirits. It once housed the temple, and in the depths of night, mysterious ceremonies took place there, when the priests and elders feasted on the “long pig that speaks,” when the drums beat until dawn and wild dances fueled the frenzy.

When it was built, no one can say. Centuries have seen these black stones, as grim as the ruins of Karnak, made by a mysterious genius, dedicated to something now lost to the world forever. For ages it lay hidden in the shadows of the forest, maintained and polished by hands long turned to dust; it was regarded with both reverence and fear. It was tapu, devoted to fearsome deities, and only the priests or the chiefs could come near it, except during nights of horrifying feasting.

It stood in a grove of shadowy trees, which even in the afternoon cast a gloom over the heavy black rocks of the platform and the high seats where chiefs and wizards once sat feasting on the bodies of their enemies. Above them twisted the contorted limbs of a massive banyan tree, and below, among the gnarled roots, there was a deep, dark pit.

We paused in a clear patch of green grass gently shaded by mango trees surrounded by ferns, grass, and flowering bushes, and looked into the darkness. This area was off-limits until the French arrived. There was no road leading to it back then; only a narrow, dim trail, guarded by spirits of Po and walked by people only in the quiet darkness of the jungle night, brought the warriors carrying live sacrifices to the place of the gods. But the French, as if to mock the sacred things of the conquered, built two roads that met right here, one winding over the mountains to Hanamenu and the other following the river to a dead-end in the hills.

“My ancestors feasted on 'long pig' here and danced through the night,” said Hot Tears, the hunchback, as he lit a cigarette and settled onto the stone pulpit that used to belong to a wizard. His heavy face, resting on his crooked chest, revealed no hint of fear; a pale imp flickered in each of his narrowed eyes as he looked up at me.

“That banyan tree, my grandfather said, held the toua, the coconut fiber cord that kept the living meat hanging above the baking pit. There, you see, among the roots—that was the oven, above which the prisoners hung. Here stood the huge drums, and the priests' servants beat them until the darkness was filled with sound and all the valleys could hear it.

“Aue!” The hunchback jumped to the edge of the pit. He raised his skinny arms in the air, and I thought I saw, among the twisted limbs of the old banyan tree, fifty feet above, the trembling bodies swaying. “The toua breaks! They’re falling. Here on the rocks. They’re killed by blows from the u'u, like this! And like this the meat is cut and wrapped in the meika aa. Light the fire! Stack up the wood! It’s roasting!”

His eerie laughter echoed through the quiet darkness of the jungle, sending chills down my spine. In my view, the high black seats were occupied by shadowy figures, and the light from the candlenut torches illuminated their tattooed faces and shining eyes. When the hunchback moved away from the tree of death, pretending to carry a platter, first towards the great seats of the chiefs and then to the large platform below, I felt a shiver run through me.

“Oh! They dance! Oh! Oh! Oh! They danced, and they loved! All night the drums beat. The drums! The drums! The drums!” He threw his twisted body on the grass and laughed wildly, until the old banyan tree echoed back at him. For a moment, he convulsed in a silence even more chilling than his laughter, then lay still.

“Ouch!” he said, rolling onto his back. “My grandfather thought this Pekia was the home of demons.” He paused. “As for me, I don’t believe in them or any other gods.” And he exhaled derisively.

Le Moine examined the scene closely.

“What a sight at night, with torches dancing, and the seats filled with men in red pareus! But it's terrible!”

He stepped back a hundred feet and squinted through a piece of paper.

“I wish I could paint it,” he said. “It must be a huge canvas, mostly dark with just the torches and a few faces. Oh my God! Magnificent!”

Is cannibalism in the Marquesas a thing of the past? Do those grim warriors who survived the new regime ever slip back into their old ways? Who can say? It seems unlikely, since the population in the valleys is so small and the movements of the people are so limited that an absence is noticed quickly. Still, every once in a while, someone goes missing.

Oh man. He jumped into the sea. He was crazy. Life was too long.

Or, if the disappearance happened while crossing from one valley to another, it’s said that a rock or a landslide swept the missing person over a cliff. These are reasonable explanations, but there are still rumors of dark desires seeking fulfillment and of ancient rituals brought back by the moke, the hermits who live in the mountains.

Two disappearances had happened during my short time in Atuona, and I hadn’t thought much of the rumors. But now, with the awful laughter of the hunchback still echoing in my ears, those thoughts lingered ominously in my mind. I had never felt the sunshine as pleasant or tasted the mountain air with more joy than when we left that dreadful place and were back on the trail again.

Our destination was a waterfall with a pool where we could swim, and after leaving the Pekia, we followed the stream, climbing higher and higher away from the sea. In the Marquesas, all the rivers start in the mountains, where torrents rush down the cliffs during rainy weather. Since the valleys are just narrow ravines at their beginning, the water gathers in their depths and flows to the ocean, gently rippling on sunny days, but during a downpour, it rages, rolling huge boulders and eroding the cliffs.

These streams are essential to the people living in the upper valleys. In the past, during times of war, many of these mountain inhabitants never saw the sea; the beach clans prevented them from getting there, claiming the fishing rights for themselves and making it dangerous for the hill people to go to the shore. All the people in a single valley, whether six or even a dozen clans, came together to fight against other valleys, putting their lives on the line if they went beyond the hills. However, under a wise and strong leader, an entire valley lived peacefully and recognized no class or clan divisions.

“We are going to Vaihae, The Waters of the Great Desire,” said Malicious Gossip. “It used to be a sacred place.”

We climbed painfully, Le Moine and I feeling the sharp edges of the stones cutting through the thick soles of our shoes. The others, who were barefoot, seemed unaffected, moving as effortlessly and gracefully as panthers along the jagged trail. Soon, we heard the crash of the Vaihae, and as we slid down the mountainside a hundred feet, we found ourselves in the depths of a gorge just a yard or two wide, a mere crack in the rocks, filled with the booming roar of rushing water. The rain-swollen stream, trapped in the narrow passage, splashed foaming high against the spray-wet cliffs and plunged in a powerful torrent into a deep chasm carved out of the solid granite twenty feet below.

We took off our clothes and jumped into the pool, feeling the refreshing chill of the swirling water after our sweaty hike. Malicious Gossip and her sister were hesitant at first, but when I climbed up a slippery rock that was twenty feet high to dive in and stayed there admiring the impressive beauty of the scene, Malicious Gossip took off her tunic and swam through the current, bringing me my camera safe from the water. She looked like a water nymph from old myths as she glided through the green water, her hair flowing over her shoulders and her body moving as effortlessly as a fish. Once she was wet, she stayed in the water with us and told me there was a cave behind the waterfall, hidden by the shimmering curtain of water.

“It’s called Enamoa (Check out the Servant of the Priest) and it has a dark history,” said Malicious Gossip. “Follow me and we’ll go inside.”

She swam across the pool and, turning gracefully in the water, disappeared beneath the surface of the swirling current. Kekela followed her, and I tried several times, but each time I was thrown back, bruised and out of breath. It wasn't until Kekela found a long stick in the cave and plunged it through the white foam that I was finally able to grab the end in the rushing water and push my way through the roaring and crashing flood.

The cave was dark and damp, with light coming through the flowing curtain of green water. Creepy, crawling creatures squirmed at our feet, and shadows filled the corners of the cavern. Malicious Gossip's figure was a blur in the gloom, and her soft voice was like a deep echo of the rushing water.

“The story of the cave of Enamoa isn’t just a legend,” she said, “it’s more than that. It was an event known to our grandfathers. There were two warriors who desired a woman, and she was tapu to them. She was a taua vehine, a priestess of the old gods. But they wanted her, even though they were friends who shared their wives as they divided their popoi.”

“Panalua,” Kekela said. “That means 'dear friend custom.' We had it in Hawaii. Brothers shared their wives, and sisters shared their husbands.”

“These two were like brothers and loved each other as if they were related by blood,” said Malicious Gossip. “And their hearts burned with passion when they saw this girl. It was wrong of them because it went against the will of the gods. She belonged to their own clan, and the priests had declared her tapu until she reached a certain age. Her brother served the priests, and she was dedicated to the gods. She was protected by the most sacred traditions. It was forbidden to touch her or her food.

“Yet these warriors, toa they were, and famous in battle, wanted her with a desire that kept them awake at night. And finally, when they had drunk the fiery namu enata until their minds were ablaze, they lay in wait for her.”

“She came down to the pool to bathe. The pool itself was tapu except for those dedicated to the gods, yet this miserable pair crept through the lantana by the bank and watched her. She stood on the rock above the pool and removed her pae, her gauzy cap, her long robe, and her pareu, all made of the finest tree cloth, because in those days before the whites arrived, our people were properly dressed. All naked then in the sunlight, she lifted her arms toward the sky and laughed, then sat down on a rock to wash her feet.

“Suddenly, the lustful warriors jumped on her, silencing her cries with her own pae as they swam with her into the cave. She was so terrified that she lay there as if she were dead, and just before they could do what they wanted, they heard someone approaching and singing on the rocks. They didn't have time to kill her, as they had planned, fearing that she might bring death to them. They abandoned her and hurried along the cliffs, narrowly escaping before the other man arrived.”

“He had caught a glimpse of someone running away from the cave out of the corner of his eye. Intrigued, he swam over. It was late in the day, as the priestess had arrived for her evening bath. The sun had sunk behind Temetiu, and the cave was dim. The man approached cautiously, and his feet encountered a living body in the darkness—warm, soft, and fragrant with flowers.”

“Then in the darkness, finding her incredibly sweet, he gave in to the demon. But when he finally brought her through the falling water to the evening light, he cried out. He was the moa, the servant of the high priest, and this was his sister whom he loved.

“He screamed three times, so that everyone in the valley heard him, and then he threw her into the pool to drown. The people saw him running to the hills. He never came back to them. He became a moke, a sorcerer, who lived alone in the forest, feared by everyone. People heard him screaming at night, and then the storms appeared. His eyes were seen through the leaves on jungle paths, and anyone who saw him died.”

“Then the people named the cave Enamoa, which means Behold the Servant of the Priest. It was much larger back then, as big as a grove. But one night, the people heard the sound of falling rocks, and by morning the cave was as small as it is now. The moke was never seen again. He had caused the walls of the cave to collapse on himself because it had witnessed his sin.”

Malicious Gossip, after finishing her story, slipped back behind the green curtain of the waterfall. After pushing through the blinding, roaring waters and floating on the surface of the pool with my aching lungs, I saw her putting on her tunic on the rocks above. Soon, with our clothes over our wet bodies, we walked back to Atuona, Tahiapii smoking Kekela's pipe.

A search for rubber trees on the Ahoa plateau; a battle with the wild white dogs; the tale of an ancient migration, shared by the wild cattle hunters in the Cave of the Spine of the Chinaman.

I went one day with Le Brunnec, the French trader, looking for rubber trees on the Ahao plateau, above Hanamenu, on the other side of Hiva-oa Island.

Mounted on small but sturdy mountain ponies, we followed the trail across the river and up the steep mountainside covered in dense jungle, climbing higher and higher above deep gorges and dizzying cliffs, until at noon we crossed the highest range and descended to the wide plateau.

A thousand feet above the valley, flat like a prairie and unbelievably wild and empty, the plain spread out in front of us. Not far to our right, a long and narrow mound rose five hundred feet from the plateau; it was a hill that didn’t disrupt the vast flatness but instead looked like a huge earthwork built by people. Its green terrace was a wild garden filled with flowers and fruit growing in lush chaos, watered by a stream that sparkled as it tumbled through tall ferns.

There was no breadfruit, as it only grows where people are around to take care of it, and across the entire tableland, there wasn’t a single person or sign of human presence. Wild cattle and boars roamed in groups among the scattered trees or stood in the shallow stream, watching us with curiosity as we passed by. Thousands of guinea pigs darted in front of our horses' feet, and the free descendants of pet cats from the cities of Europe and America perched on high branches to look down at our procession.

I have seen the Garden of Allah and the Garden of Eden—if I can trust the Arab sheik from whom I bought my camel for the trip—I have experienced Nikko at its finest and celebrated in Johore and Kandy, but during the hours when I beheld it, this plateau of Ahao was the most beautiful place on earth. The wild beauty of its tropical landscape, the greenery of its foliage, the rich abundance and brilliance of its flowers, the soft hues shimmering along its distant horizon, and the majestic grandeur of Temetiu's far-off peak shrouded in thunderous clouds created a scene that was primitive, mysterious, and sublime.

On the trees, hundreds of orchids hung like jewels, and vines draped in garlands. Flowers of every color created a vibrant carpet beneath the horses' hooves; the hart's-tongue, the manamana-o-hina, the papa-mako, and the parasol-plant, along with mosses of every kind and countless ferns, covered the ground. Some were giant tree-ferns, as tall as trees, while others unfurled snake-like stems from masses of rusty-colored matting, and everywhere, the delicate lace of the uu-fenua spread out, a maiden-hair fern that makes the florist's offerings seem clumsy and insignificant.

We carved our own path through the tall grass and clusters of flowering bushes, since there were no trails except those created by the large herds of wild cattle that roamed the plain. I saw at least three thousand of them grazing on the lush vegetation, or stopping with their heads raised before they ran away at our presence.

“They're descendants of a few that were left by shipmasters decades ago,” said Le Brunnec. “Twenty years ago, they roamed in huge herds all over the islands. I’ve driven them off the trail to Hanamenu with a stick. Just like the goats left by the American captain, Porter, on Nuka-hiva, they thrived and multiplied, but, similar to the goats, they are being wiped out.”

“Both cattle and goats were beyond counting when, with peace fully established and the population shrinking, the French allowed the Marquesans to buy guns. The locals hunt in groups. Fifteen or twenty men, each with a rifle or shotgun, ride on horseback to the grazing areas. At the sound of the gunshots, the animals run to the highest points of the hills. Understanding their behavior, the locals position themselves along the ridges and shoot as many as they can. They keep or take home three or four, but they kill thirty or forty. They die in the brush, and their bones scatter across the ground.”

I told him about the buffalo, antelope, and deer that used to roam our woods and fill our prairies; about Alexander Wilson, who in Kentucky in 1811 estimated one flock of wild passenger pigeons at two billion, and how there isn’t a single one of those birds left in the world as far as anyone knows.

Le Brunnec sighed, because he was a true sportsman and wouldn’t kill even a pig unless he could eat most of it. He often lifted the shotgun that rested on the pommel, but then let it fall again, saying, “We’ll have a wild bird for dinner.”

We set up our tent as the moon cast its light over the top of the hill. Never had a tent been pitched in a place so isolated and beautiful. We picked the protection of a moto tree for our campsite, one of the most impressive trees in these islands. Le Brunnec mentioned that only about ten of them remained in all the Marquesas while I admired its tall trunk and stunning canopy. “The white people who used their axes in these islands would have turned the ark of the covenant into firewood.”

We built a fire in front of our tent and cooked a wild chicken he had shot, which, along with pilot biscuits and Bordeaux wine, made a great dinner. As we ate, darkness surrounded us, and the vast plateau looked mysterious in the moonlight, while the night was cool and pleasant. We relaxed in comfort, enjoying the fresh air at that altitude and smoking “John's” mix from Los Angeles until sleepiness caused us to drop the tobacco. Our tired senses barely allowed us to pull our mats into the tent before we fell asleep.

I was awakened by the chilling howls of a wolf pack, and a shout from Le Brunnec, “The dogs!”

He stood by the open flap of the tent, a dark silhouette of a man and a gun. When I grabbed my own rifle and got to his side, I saw in the moonlight a group of huge white creatures, some tangled in a snarling pile over what was left of our dinner, others crouched on their haunches in a circle, facing us. One of them leaped as Le Brunnec fired, and its hot breath brushed my face just before I pulled the trigger.

The two injured animals struggled on the ground until a second shot put them out of their misery, and the rest moved off a little way, where Le Brunnec kept them at bay with an occasional shot while I brought up the frightened ponies, snorting and rearing. Throwing more wood on the coals created a circle of firelight around us, and Le Brunnec and I took turns standing guard until morning, while the white dogs sat around us like ghostly figures and filled the night with their howls. One or both of us must have dozed off, because during the night the animals dragged away the two dead ones and picked at their bones.

These, Le Brunnec said, were the children of dogs that were once friendly to humans, and like the wild cats we had seen, they silently showed how many people once lived on this plateau.

When dawn broke, the mountain rodents were darting around the meadows, but the dogs had wandered off, leaving just two piles of bones and the mess outside the tent as evidence of their adventure. The sun poured over the mesa, revealing countless fern fronds, mosses, and colorful petals swaying in the gentle breeze as Le Brunnec and I headed down to the stream to wash up.

Alas! I lounged there on the bank, planning to soak in all this beauty, and sat on the puke, a feathery plant that was beautiful to look at but a total nuisance for its irritating nature. It’s a delicate shrub that shrinks away at the approach of people, its leaves folding out of sight, but despite its shyness, it left me with a painful reminder that I had not respected its space.

At noon, we reached the hill that rises from the plateau and discovered a cistern at its base, the only sign we had seen of human presence, aside from the dogs and cats that had reverted to a wild state. It was a basin carved into solid rock, likely the water source for the tribes that lived here, surrounded by enemies. It had a vague resemblance to an altar, and in the brush nearby, we spotted the charred remains of a massive paepae, similar to the giant Marae of Papara in Tahiti, which itself seemed related to the great pyramid temple of Borobudur in Java. These were sorrowful reminders of humanity, who is so much like the gods, yet fades away like a leaf in the wind.

Lying in the stream that overflowed the edge of the old cistern, we talked about our plans. Le Brunnec was sure that the eva, which we had found in large numbers, was a rubber tree. He said that rubber came from many trees, vines, roots, and plants, and that the sap of the eva, once dried and processed, had all the necessary bouncing properties. We were going to estimate the number of eva trees on the plateau and evaluate the land's potential for a plantation. This way, we might turn that poisonous tree, whose reddish-purple, tempting fruit has given so many Marquesans an escape from life's struggles, into gold; whose juice bruised or wounded warriors drank to avoid pain or shame.

Idling in the clear water, we heard a voice and jumped up, startled. A group of locals looked down at us from the hill above, and their leader was asking who the strange haoe were that had come to their valley.

Le Brunnec yelled his name—Proneka, in the local language—and after a brief discussion, they called us over for breakfast. We had no guns or, in fact, any clothing besides a towel, since our horses were tied up a bit farther away, but we climbed the hill. Halfway up the steep slope, we ran into a wild sow with eight piglets. Le Brunnec mentioned that one of them would be a nice gift for our hosts, but the mother, sensing his plan, moved her piglets behind her and stood her ground. Trying to grab one of the piglets while being naked, barefoot, and unarmed would have resulted in serious injuries from those sharp tusks, so we decided to skip the gift and approached our hosts empty-handed.

We found them waiting for us in the Grotto of the Spine of the Chinaman, a shallow cave on the hillside. There were seven of them, as naked as we were, with thick lips, their eyes outlined with blue ama-ink, and their bodies decorated with it. They had killed a bull the day before and cooked the meat in bamboo tubes, steaming it in the ground until it was tender and delicious. We feasted on it and then relaxed in the cool cave while we smoked. They were curious about why we were there and asked if we were after beef. I denied that was our purpose and mentioned that I was interested if Ahao had once hosted many people.

“Ai! E mea tiatohu hoi! Don’t you know about the Piina of Fiti-nui? About the people who used to be here? Aoe? Then I will tell you.”

While the pipe was passed around, Kitu, the leader of the hunters, shared the following:

“The Piina of Fiti-nui had always lived here on the plateau of Ahao. The wise men recorded a hundred and twenty generations since the clan began. That was long before Iholomoni built the temple in Iudea, which the priests of the new white gods talk about. The High Place of the Piina of Fiti-nui was ancient even before Iholomoni was born.”

“But, as old as the clan was, there came a time when its numbers dwindled. For longer than anyone could remember, they had been at war with the Piina of Hana-uaua, who lived in the valley below this plateau. These two groups were related, but the animosity between them was intense. The Piina of Fiti-nui were constantly tormented by their enemies. Their popoi pits were raided and drained, their women were taken, and their men were captured and consumed. Month after month and year after year, the clan lost its strength.”

“They had almost stopped tattooing their bodies because they questioned what it was for when they were soon going to be baked in the ovens of the Hana-uaua people. They couldn’t defeat the Hana-uaua, as they were few in number and the Hana-uaua were many. The best fighters were dead. Only the gods could save the last of the tribe from the veinahae, the vampire who seizes the dead.

“The taua went to the High Place and pleaded with the gods, but they were silent. They didn’t respond. Then, in despair, the chief, Atituahuei, set a deadline; if the gods didn’t provide guidance by then, he would lead every member of the tribe against the enemy and face death while the war clubs echoed.”

“Atituahuei went with the taua to the giant rock, Meae-Topaiho, the sacred stone shaped like a spear that stood between the lands of the warring peoples, and there he said this vow to the gods. And the people waited.”

“They waited for the time it took for the moon to grow full and then shrink again, and the gods were silent. Then the warriors got their u'u made of polished ironwood, filled their baskets with stones, and prepared their spears. On the darkest night of the moon, the Piina of Fiti-nui was set to go out to battle and be killed by the Hana-uaua.

“But before the moon had set, the taua came down from the High Place and said that the gods had spoken. They ordered the people to leave Ahao and sail past the Isle of Barking Dogs until they reached a new land. The gods would keep them safe from the waves. The gods had revealed to the taua a hidden valley that led to the beach, where they could build the canoes.”

“For many months, the Piina of Fiti-nui worked in secret in the hidden valley. They built five large canoes, massive double canoes, with high platforms and houses on them, the kind that are no longer built. In these canoes, they placed the women, children, and elderly, and when everything was ready, the men attacked the village of the Piina of Hana-uaua and, under the cover of darkness, took all their food to the canoes.”

“At daybreak, the Fiti-nui set out in four of the canoes, but they had to leave one behind for the chief’s daughter, who was expected to give birth at any moment, and for the women of her family, who wouldn’t leave her side. The hidden valley was filled with sounds of sorrow at their departure, but the gods had spoken, and they had to go.”

“When the four canoes were out in the ocean beyond the village of Hana-uaua, everyone started beating their war drums and blowing their shell trumpets. The people of Hana-uaua heard the commotion and thought that strangers had arrived, but they couldn’t tell if it was for a battle or a celebration. They hurried to the shore, where they saw the people of the Fiti-nui on the water, who called out to them and said they were going far away.”

“Then the Hana-uaua tribe cried. They remembered that they were brothers, and even though they had fought for a long time, the warriors of Fiti-nui had been good fighters and brave. Also, many Fiti-nui women had been taken by the men of Hana-uaua, and captured youths had been adopted, and the tribes were connected by many ties."

“The two tribes communicated across the water, and the tribe of Hana-uaua pleaded with their brothers not to leave. They promised that they would fight no more, that the prisoners who hadn’t been eaten would be sent back to their own valley, and that the two clans would live together in friendship forever.”

“Then the people of Fiti-nui cried again, but they said that the gods had commanded them to sail away, and they had to go.”

“‘But,’ said the chief of the Fiti-nui, ‘you’ll know we’ve safely reached a new land when the Meae-Topaiho falls, when the great spear is broken by the gods, you’ll know your brothers are in a new home.’”

“Then the four canoes left, but the chief's daughter stayed behind because her child was taking a long time to be born. She lived peacefully and comfortably with the people of Hana-uaua. When the season of the breadfruit came and went, one night, as the rain and wind caused the earth to shake and slide, the people of Hana-uaua heard a roaring and a crashing.”

“‘The gods are angry,’ they said. But the chief’s daughter replied, ‘My people have found their home.’ And in the morning, they discovered that the Meae-Topaiho had fallen, the spear’s blade was broken, and the prophecy was fulfilled.”

“That was four generations ago, and ever since then, the people of Hana-uaua have been searching for some sign from their brothers who left. Their names have been remembered by the tribe. Ten years ago, many men came here to work on the plantations, from Puka-Puka and Na-Puka in the Paumotas, and they spoke with the people.

Aue! They were the grandchildren of the Piina of Fiti-nui. In those low islands where their parents journeyed, they preserved the old words and names. They remembered the journey. An old man was brought by his son, and he recalled everything his father had shared with him, and his father was the son of the chief, Atituahuei.

“These people did not look like our men. The many years had changed them. But they knew about the spear rock and the prophecy, and they were truly the lost brothers of the Hana-uaua people.

“But the Hana-uaua people were also dying now. None were left of the chief's daughter's bloodline. No man was alive on the plateau of Ahao.”

“Their popoi pits are the places where wild boars wallow; the wild white dogs sit on their paepaes. The horned cattle roam where they once walked. Hee i te fenua ke! They are gone, and the stranger will take their graves.”

A feast for the men of Motopu; the preparation of kava and its consumption; the tale of the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.

The Vagabond, Kivi, who lived near the High Place, came down to my paepae one evening to invite me to a feast in Atuona Valley for the men of Motopu, who had been incredibly blessed by the sea god.

Months of storms, Kivi said, had knocked down many impressive palms of Taka-Uka and washed thousands of ripe coconuts into the bay, where the strong current across the channel carried the fruit right to the inlet of Motopu, on the island of Tahuata. The people of that village, with minimal effort, had enjoyed a great harvest.

Now they had arrived, bringing back the dried and bagged copra. They had received seven hundred francs for a ton of it from Kriech, the German merchant of Taka-Uka, from whose own groves it had been taken by the storms.

The next day, their canoes filled with his goods, they would set sail for home. One day they had stayed to transport redwood planks from the schooner in the bay to the location of Kivi's new house. So that night, in appreciation, he wanted to celebrate with them. There would be plenty of food, and there would be lots of kava. He asked me to join them in this feast, which would remind us of the good days of drinking kava, which were now nearly forgotten.

I happily got up from the palm-shaded mat where I had been lying, hoping in vain for a breath of coolness in the hot, sticky air of the day, and adjusted the red pareu around my waist. I had often heard about the days of kava drinking before missionaries insisted on banning that drink that the locals loved. The traders supported the priests' righteous protests because kava didn’t cost the islanders anything, while they could profit from selling rum, absinthe, and opium to them. So, kava drinking was suppressed, and after decades of indulging in stronger stimulants and narcotics, the locals lost their taste for the milder drink of their ancestors.

The French law banned selling, trading, or giving any alcoholic drinks to the Marquesans. However, the law was basically ignored because only with rum and wine could they motivate the Marquesans to work, and I couldn't even criticize them in my thoughts for their love of alcohol. Those who haven't witnessed a dying culture can't truly understand the deep despair in which these people are fading away. Their politeness and hospitality—especially towards the white people who have destroyed them—barely hint at their past joy in life and their overflowing generosity. With no hope left and their only future being death, it's hard to fault them for seeking a few moments of escape.

Some years earlier, during the harsh days of complete subjugation, entire populations turned to drinking. In many valleys, the leaders took part in making the illegal namu enata, or coconut-brandy. In the Philippines, where millions of gallons of coconut-brandy are produced, it's known as tuba, but it’s generally called arrack throughout tropical Asia. Fresh from the spathes of the coconut tree, namu tastes like a very light, creamy beer or mead. It's delicious and refreshing, and only slightly intoxicating. If it’s allowed to ferment and turn sour, it becomes extremely potent. Its consumption is then split into two parts—drinking and intoxication. There’s no break in between. "Forty-rod" whiskey seems mild in comparison.

I had watched how namu is made, and it’s quite simple. The local people climb the tree and make cuts in the flowers, which usually have three to six on each palm. They hang a calabash beneath the cuts and let the juice drip continuously for day and night. It’s a slow process since the juice drips out very gradually. This method can be repeated forever without harming the tree. In places where the liquor is collected to sell in large amounts, the locals tie bamboo poles from tree to tree so that a nimble person can run through the forest, taking care of the calabashes, pouring them into bigger containers, and lowering those to the ground, all without needing to come down from up high.

The namu, when old, makes the Marquesans turn back to their worst savagery, leading to many murders. Under the watchful eye of the gendarme, its production stops, but a hundred valleys lack white policemen, and the few people left among their hundreds of ruined paepaes surrender to drunkenness. I've witnessed a valley consumed by it, where men and women are wildly dancing the ancient nude dances in indescribable orgies of freedom and primal behavior.

Namu enata literally means “man booze.” The Persian-Arabic word, nam, or narm-keffi, refers to “the liquid from the palm flower.” From this, one might assume that Asia taught the Marquesans how to make namu during their prehistoric journey to the islands, but the discoverers and early white residents in Polynesia noticed no drunkenness except for that from kava drinking. It was the Europeans or the Asians brought by the whites who introduced the harsher coconut brandy, as well as rum and opium, and these drinks have played a significant role in harming the natives.

It has always been this way with men of other races that have been dominated by white people. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin shares that when he was a commissioner to the Indians in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he and his fellow commissioners decided that they wouldn’t give the Indians any rum until the treaty they desperately wanted was finalized, and that afterward they would have plenty.

He imagines an all-night party of the Native Americans after they signed the treaty, and concludes: “And, truly, if it is the will of Providence to eliminate these people to make space for farmers, it doesn’t seem unlikely that rum could be the intended means. It has wiped out all the tribes that once lived along the coast.”

It wasn't my place to guess the intentions of Providence regarding the Marquesans. Kava had been the drink chosen by the old gods before the arrival of white men. The craft of making it was nearly forgotten; I didn't know any white man who had ever tasted from the kava-bowl. So, I followed Kivi down the trail with some excitement.

Broken Plate, a tough guy in an English cloth cap and whale tooth earrings, was waiting for us in the road below the House of the Golden Bed, and together the three of us set off to find the kava bush. As we followed the narrow path up the mountainside, looking through the thick vines and shrubs for the large, heart-shaped leaves and jointed stalks we wanted, Kivi spoke passionately about the degenerate times he was living in.

Let others secretly make cuts in the flower of the coconut and hang gourds to catch the juice, he said. Or let them bend the hinges of the knee so that rum can follow, fawning on white people. Not him! The drink of his ancestors, the drink of his youth, was good enough for him! Swiftly he pushed aside a leafy branch hanging over the path, and in the dappled sunlight and shade, his strong, brown limbs looked like the smooth trunks of an old manzanita tree.

He didn't have the scaly skin or bloodshot eyes of the kava addict, whose excesses leave obvious marks on their victims. I remembered seeing a figure caught in the beam of my flashlight on a dark path—a withered being whose entire face and body had turned a dull green, and just thinking about that horrifying sight made me shudder. But Broken Plate, ahead on the trail, called back to us that he had found a good bush, and without saying anything more, we climbed toward it.

The kava, a type of pepper plant, grows over six feet tall, and the one we found towered above us with its many jointed branches rustling with large, flat leaves. Kivi explained that the drink comes from the root, so we got to work digging it up.

It was massive, like a giant yam, and after we pulled it from the stubborn soil, it took the strength and agility of two of us to carry it to the paepae of Broken Plate, where the feast was going to happen. A dozen older women, skilled at grating the breadfruit for making popoi, were waiting for us there, sitting in a circle on the low platform. The root, cleaned in the river, was placed on the stones, and the women went to work on it with cowry shells, scraping it into pieces like coleslaw. It was as hard as ginger and filled a large tanoa, or wooden trough made from ironwood.

The scraping had just started when Broken Plate and I took a break from our work, smoking pandanus-leaf cigarettes in the shade, when down the road came about six of the most beautiful young girls from the village, dressed in their finest.

Teata, full of the confidence of a celebrated beauty, walked ahead, wearing a form-fitting gown with fishnet details, clearly inspired by some random fashion magazine. It was her only piece of clothing, and through the large openings of the trendy lace, her skin showed through, the color of freshly cooked breadfruit. She walked by us with a playful flip of her perfectly shaped head and joined her jealous friends.

They sat on mats around the ironwood trough and chewed the grated root, which, after thorough chewing, they spat out into banana leaf cups. This chewing of the Aram root is what makes kava as a drink, since it's the fermentation in the saliva that breaks down alkaloids and sugars and releases the narcotic effects. Only the healthiest and most beautiful girls are picked to chew the root, as this desirable and respected privilege is denied to those with imperfect teeth and to those whose cheeks do not have a rosy glow.

Nevertheless, as I relaxed and smoked in my pareu on the paepae of my humble hosts, I felt some doubts creeping in. But why question the means by which one reaches Nirvana? Had I not sipped the chicha beer of the Andes and found it enjoyable? Vague comparisons and guesses floated before me in the wisps of smoke rising in the clear evening light.

What hidden clue to the earliest beginnings of humanity can be found in the fact that two groups, as distant as the Marquesans and the South American Indians, prepare their traditional drink in the same way? In the Andes, corn replaces the kava root, and young girls, who are descendants of the ancient Incas, chew the grains while sitting in a circle with a certain ceremonial feel, just like the Marquesans do. The Marquesas Islands are at the same latitude as Peru. Were these two groups once part of the same race, living on that long-lost continent that Darwin theorized about?

Dusk settled in slowly as I reflected on the mysteries that our lives are built upon and the unknown origins and forgotten meanings of all human traditions. The iron-wood trough was filled with chewed-up roots, and in groups and pairs, the girls slipped away to bathe in the river. There, they were joined by arriving guests, and the sounds of laughter and splashing floated up to us as darkness enveloped the paepae and the torches were lit.

Lights were shining like stars up the dark valley as each household prepared their evening fire to roast breadfruit or grill fish, and lanterns were hung on the bamboo fences that marked property boundaries or contained beloved pigs. A cool breeze picked up and rustled the leaves of coconut and bamboo, carrying a clean, earthy scent from the depths of the forest.

The last bather emerged from the stream, refreshed by the cool water and decorated with flowers. Everyone was in a cheerful mood, ready for food and fun. Half a dozen bright torches lit up their joyful, tattooed faces and dark bodies, reflecting the vibrant colors of the blossoms in their hair. The circle of light made the rustling coconut grove darker, with the tall trees surrounding us on all sides.

Under the watchful eyes of many sparkling gazes, Kivi pierced green coconuts that had been brought to him fresh from the trees and poured their cool juice over the chewed-up kava. He mixed it well and then, using his hands, formed balls from the sticky mixture, squeezing the juice into another tanoa, which was a deep, rich blue from being soaked in kava multiple times. Once this trough was full of a muddy liquid, he skillfully clarified it by sweeping a net of coconut fiber through it. All the while, he chanted in a deep, resonant voice the ancient song of the ceremony.

“Come eat, and gather around the food!” he called seriously when the final ritual was done. “Come to supper; everything is ready.”

“Menike,” he said to me, “You know that to drink kava, you have to be on an empty stomach. If you drink it after eating, it will make you sick. If you don’t eat right after drinking it, you won’t enjoy it. Take it now, and then eat, quickly.”

He dipped a shell in the trough, sprinkled a few drops over his shoulder to appease the god of the kava-drinking, and handed the shell to me.

Ugh! The drink tasted like dirt and water, a bit sweet at first and then harsh and strong. It was tough to swallow, but all the guys downed theirs in one go, so when Kivi handed me another shellful, I did the same.

Kai! Kai. Eat! Eat!” Kivi shouted then. The women hurried forward with the food, and we dug in eagerly. Pig and popoi, shark sweetbreads, roasted breadfruit, and sweet potatoes, fruits and coconut milk jumped from the wide leaf platters into our open mouths. Hardly a word was spoken. We ate quickly and silently, except for the whispering of the palms and the soft sound of the women’s hurried bare feet.

Only, as he noticed any slowdown, Kivi shouted energetically, “Kai! Kai!”

I sat with my back against the wall of the Broken Plate house, eating quickly at my host's insistence, and soon I appreciated the support. After the feast, the guests lay on the mats. Women and children were eating the leftover food on the leaf platters. The torches were all put out except for one. Its flickering light shone on Kivi's aged face, and the whites of his eyes caught and reflected the glow. The tattoos around his eyes looked like dark holes from which the sparks shone eerily, and the kava rising to his brain or mine made those sparks appear haunting in my alert, sleepy state.

From the shadows where the women crouched, Teata's face emerged like a haunting flower. She had decorated her long black braids with the bright glow of Ear of the Ghost Woman, a peculiar fungus found on old trees, a popular evening accessory among the island beauties. The beautiful flowers glimmered around her head like enormous butterflies, fitting jewels for such a seductress of such a playful nature. The mysterious light gave her velvet cheek and neck a shimmer that made her look like the ghost woman from ancient legend, designed to lure the unsuspecting to a tipsy demise.

The conversation reached me from the darkness, like voices from a phonograph horn, faint and distant. One shared the story of Tahiapepae, the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.

Famine had hit Atuona Valley. Children were dying of hunger on the paepaes, and mothers' breasts shrank so much that they couldn't produce any milk. So the warriors set out in the big canoes for Motopu. The demand was for meat, and the only meat available was puaa oa, the “long pig.”

Then, in the darkness, the hungry, fighting men of Atuona quietly beached their canoes and crept towards the sleeping village of Motopu. Seven were killed before they could escape to the hills, and one was captured alive, a slender, beautiful girl of ten years, whom they tied up and threw into the canoe with the dead.

Back they came from their victory and landed on the shore here, just a throw away from the paepae of Broken Plate. Their people welcomed them with drums and chants, bringing rosewood poles to carry the meat. The living girl was thrown over the leader's shoulder, still tied up and crying, and in single file, the heroes and their people marched up the trail past the Catholic mission. Tohoaa, Great Sea Slug, chief of Atuona and grandfather of Flag, the gendarme, led the way, and over his broad shoulder hung the Girl Who Had Lost Her Strength.

Then from the mission came Father Orens, holding a crucifix. He stood tall in his black robe, facing the Great Sea Slug, raising his hand with the crucifix high. Father Orens had been made tapu by the Great Sea Slug, to whom he had shared the wonders of the world and offered many gifts. To touch him meant death, for the Great Sea Slug had hosted a feast for him and adorned him with the white tapa, symbolizing sacredness.

Powerful was the god of Père Orens, and could work magic. In his pocket, he always carried a small god that day and night said “Mika! Mika!” and moved tiny arms around and around a plate of white metal. This man stood now before the Great Sea Slug, and the chief paused, while his hungry people came closer to hear what would happen.

“Where are you headed?” asked Père Orens.

“To Pekia, the High Place, to cook and eat,” said Great Sea Slug. Then for a moment, Père Orens stayed quiet, holding the crucifix up high, and the chief heard the voice of the small god coming from his pocket.

“Give me that small piece of living meat,” said Père Orens then.

“Me mamai oe. If you want it, take it,” said Great Sea Slug. “It’s just a little thing. We have plenty, and there’s more in Motopu.”

With these words, he put his burden on the priest's shoulder and, gathering his group again, led them past the mission, across the river, and to the High Place, where the drums beat all night long at the feast.

But The Girl Who Lost Her Strength stayed in the home of Père Orens, who freed her from her restraints, fed her, and helped her regain her strength. She was baptized and taught the faith of her savior, and then she was secretly returned to her surviving family. There, she lived a long life and passed away four years ago, always thankful to the God that had saved her from the oven.

He who spoke was her son, and here at the kava bowl together were the men of Motopu and the men of Atuona, no longer enemies.

The voice of the Motopu man faded out. I heard a ringing in my ears like when you hold a seashell up to them and hear the soothing sound of the waves. My cigarette slipped from my fingers. A hot, suffocating sirocco wind hit me. Kivi laughed, and I faintly heard his question:

“Veavea? Is it warm?”

“E, mahanahana. I'm really warm,” I struggled to reply.

My voice felt like it belonged to someone else. I pressed harder against the wall and shut my eyes.

“He goes fast,” said Broken Plate, happily.

A peace beyond what the kava-clueless could comprehend was with me. Life was a sleepy calm; not a boring stillness, but a distinct activity, as if my spirit wandered in a beautiful garden, while my body, filled with past pain and emotions, accepted a state of peace.

I could faintly hear the men chanting as they started their improvised entertainment after the feast. I knew I was being carried by several women into the house and laid on mats that felt as soft against my body as calm sea water. It was like angels were lifting me on a cloud. All my hard work and effort were done; I would never have to worry about responsibilities again. I vaguely saw a fairy waving a fan, creating a breeze filled with an indescribable fragrance.

I was then a giant, lying comfortably, stretched from the waterfall at the highest point of the valley to the shore of the sea, and around me ran the natives of Atuona in various pointless flurries, small beings whose worries meant nothing to me.

That vision faded after ages, and I found myself in the Oti dance in the Paumotas, where the older women pose and move to the rhythm of the drums, illuminated by the light of burning coconut husks. They leap into the air and seem to defy gravity, hovering three or four feet off the ground while your heart races and your mind spins in confusion. I was among these elderly women; I outshone them all, floating freely in an endless witches' dance filled with more than human joy.

The orchestra of nature started a symphony of heavenly sounds. The rustling of the palm leaves, the gentle flow of the stream, and the song of the komoko, the nightingale of the Marquesas, blended into music that was sweeter to my kava-drained ears than any harp of Apollo on Mount Olympus. The natives' chants formed a choir of voices more melodious than anyone could imagine. Life was good to its deepest core; there was no struggle, no pain, only an endless harmony of joy.

I slept for eight hours, and when I woke up, I saw, in the bright rectangle of sunlight outside the open door, Kivi squeezing some of the root of evil for a hair of the dog that had bitten him.

A trip to Taaoa; Kahuiti, the cannibal chief, and his tale of an old war triggered by a disloyal woman.

It was a casual comment from Mouth of God that prompted me to take a trip over the hills to the valley of Taaoa, south of Atuona. Malicious Gossip and her husband, sitting one evening on my mats under the stars, talked about the Marquesan tradition of naming children.

“When a baby is born,” said Mouth of God, “all the close friends and family of the parents give the infant a name. These names reflect the experiences of the child’s ancestors, or the namers, or their ancestors. Some of my wife’s names are Tavahi Teikimoetetua Tehaupiimouna. These words are distinct from each other, and they mean Malicious Gossip, She Sleeps with God, The Golden Dews of the Mountain.”

“My first three names are Vahatetua Heeafia Timeteo. Vahatetua means Mouth of God; Heeafia means One Who Looks About, and Timeteo is Marquesan for Timothee, the Bible writer."

“My uncle, the Catechist, is Tioakoekoe, Meaning Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted on a Stick, and his brother is called Pootuhatuha, which means Sliced and Distributed. That’s because their father, Tufetu, was killed at the Stinking Springs in Taaoa, and was cooked and sent all over that valley. You should see the man who killed him, Kahuiti! He is a great man and still strong, even though he’s old. He still has a taste for 'long pig' too. It wasn’t long ago that he dug up a buried corpse and ate it in the forest.”

When I mentioned that I really wanted to meet that man, Mouth of God said he would send a note of introduction that would guarantee my welcome from the chief who had eaten his grandfather. Mouth of God held no grudges against the diner. The eating was something that had happened in the past; the teachings of his strict Calvinist mother prevented him from taking revenge by eating Kahuiti, so their relationship was friendly.

The next morning, accompanied by the loyal Exploding Eggs, I headed to Taaoa Valley. The route was full of ups and downs, five miles long, trudging through muddy areas and streams, pushing through the jungle, getting caught by thorns and soaked in sweat. A lot of it was through coconut groves that belonged to the mission.

The road followed the coast and climbed over a high little cape, Otupoto, from where the shoreline of Hiva-oa, as it curves eastward, unfolded in front of us. The valleys were like mysterious caverns in the jagged, tumultuous landscape, and dark gullies reminded us of the old violent days. Above them, the mountains caught the sunlight and appeared green or black under the clear blue sky. We counted seven valleys, with the farthest ones just faint shadows in the wide expanse of different greens, separated by rocky headlands. To the right, facing the sea, was the point of Teaehoa sticking out into the vast blue ocean, and looking inland, we could see the Valley of Taaoa.

This was the central spot, the scene of Tufetu's brutal end. A large splash of red stood out like a stain of blood on the green ground of the hollow.

“Go ahead!” said Exploding Eggs. He acted as if he were lifting water in his hands, tasting it, and then spitting it out. The Stinking Springs where Tufetu was killed!

They were in an amazing gorge, where a road had been carved out of solid rock, stained brown and blue by the minerals in the bubbling water that had shaped the stone into unique patterns. Bicarbonate of soda and sulfur thickened the heavy air and coated the edges of the spring with yellow residue. It was the perfect backdrop for a fierce battle, filled with the smells of sulfur and brimstone! But it wasn’t a location to hang around on a tropical day.

Taaoa Valley was narrow and deep, shrouded in constant darkness from the shadows of the mountains. About thirty houses lined the banks of a fast, rocky stream. As we got closer, we were greeted by a strong Taaoan, dressed only in a pareu and beautifully tattooed. He introduced himself as Strong in Battle and insisted that I, a newcomer, must first see a remarkable tree in the nearby forest.

Through brush and swamp, we looked for it, past numerous ruined paepaes, the homes of the long-dead thousands. We finally found it, a massive tree knocked down to the ground and lying half-buried in vines and shrubs.

“This tree is older than our people,” said Strong in Battle, sadly looking at its fallen trunk. “No one can remember when it first grew. It was like a house on a hill, so tall and massive. Our ancestors prayed to their gods beneath it. The white men cut it down to make planks. That was fifty years ago, but the wood never truly disappears. There is no wood like it in the Marquesas. The wise ones say it will last until the very end of our race.”

I reached the end of the massive trunk, where the signs of the axe and saw were still visible, and hit it with my fist. The wood felt as hard as iron, but it didn’t seem to be petrified. From what I could tell from the fallen trunk, it was a type I had never encountered before.

“Twenty years ago, I brought a guy from Peretane (England) here to check out this tree, and he chopped off a piece to take with him. No white person has seen it since then,” said Strong in Battle. He grabbed an axe from someone who was carving out a canoe from a breadfruit log and chipped off a piece for me.

We went back to the village and stepped into an area where a group of women were sitting around a popoi bowl.

“What does the Menike want?” they asked.

“He wants to see Hoouiti's footprint,” my guide said.

On one of the stones of the paepae was a footprint, perfect from heel to toe, and clearly not man-made.

“Hoouiti stood here when he threw his spear across the island,” said Strong in Battle. “He wasn't a big guy, as you can see from his footprint.”

“Fifteen kilometers! That’s a long throw for a spear,” I said.

“Aue! he was really strong. He lived on this paepae. These you see are his grandchildren. Would you like to meet my wife's father-in-law, Kahuiti? He has eaten many people. He speaks well.”

Eo! I definitely would! I promised myself that I would be privileged to meet any of my host's relatives, and especially, I wanted to talk with older, wise men who had good taste.

“That guy, Kahauiti, has really lived,” said Strong in Battle. “I’m married to the sister of Great Night Moth, who was really brave and active, but now he’s kind of foolish. But Kahauiti! Oh! Oh! Oh! Wow! Wow! Wow! There he is.”

I never figured out how my informant was connected to the man who was his wife's father-in-law, because suddenly I saw the man himself and realized I was meeting someone significant. Kahauiti was on the porch of a small hut, sitting cross-legged and chatting with another old man. Both of them had a striking presence, but overall, I thought Kahauiti was the most distinguished-looking person I had seen, whether in New York or Cairo, London or Beijing.

He had that unmistakable, yet certain, air of superiority and confidence in his position and knowledge that only a few people in the world possess—like Yuan Shih Kai, Rabindranath Tagore, Sitting Bull, and Porfirio Diaz. He wore just a pareu, and he was covered in tattoos from his toenails to his hair roots. A solid patch of color stretched from his neck to his hip on the left side, as if he was wearing half of a blue shirt. The tahuna who did the tattoos appeared to have outlined and then filled in that half of his torso. But knowing that each tiny dot of color represented the jab of a bone needle driven by the force of a mallet, I realized Kahauiti had endured a lot for his body art. No medal, whether iron or Victoria Cross, could represent more suffering.

The bare half of his chest, a coppery red, contrasted with the cobalt, and his face was striped alternately with this natural color and blue. Two inches of the ama ink ran across his eyes from ear to ear, covering every bit of lid and eyebrow, and from this makeshift bandage, his eyes shone with quick and sharp intelligence. Other stripes crossed his face from temple to chin, the lowest connecting with the field of blue that stretched down to his waist.

His long, thick, snow-white beard flowed down over his dark skin and was tied into a knot on his broad chest. It was the beard of a prophet or a seer, and when Kahauiti stood tall at six and a half feet, he looked as majestic as a man in a crown and royal garments. He had a massive physique, reminiscent of one of Buonarroti's ancient figures, strong and flexible, elegant and upright.

When I was introduced as a Menike who loved the Marquesans and who, having heard of Kahauiti, would drink from his fountain of memories, the old man looked at me closely. His eyes sparkled, and he broke into a broad smile, revealing all his healthy, white teeth. His smile was warm and disarming, with a genuine sweetness that won me over right away, so that, maybe foolishly, I would have trusted him if he had proposed a walk in the jungle.

He took my outstretched hand but didn’t shake it. Handshaking was so new and strange to them that they only touched fingers, like a wealthy person greeting a poor relative or a king greeting a commoner. His friendliness felt like that of a monarch towards a courtier, but once he started talking, he quickly became genuine and cheerful.

Motioning for me to sit on the mat in front of him, he squatted down again with an air of dignity and continued his work of braiding a rope made from faufee bark, which was an inch thick and perfectly crafted.

“Mouth of God, from the family of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick, has told me about the killing of Tufetu, their ancestor,” I suggested, to guide our conversation in the direction I wanted.

At the mention of the first three names, Kahauiti smiled, but when Tufetu was brought up, he let out a loud roar. I had clearly stirred up some proud memories. He sat back on his haunches and moved closer to me.

“Afu! Afu! Afu!” he said, the sound in his language that signifies the groan of someone dying. “You came by the Fatueki?”.

“I tasted the water and noticed the smell,” I replied.

“It was there that Tufetu died,” he noted. “I delivered the blow, and I ate his arm, his right arm, because he was brave and strong. That was a war!”

“What sparked that war?” I asked the cheerful cannibal.

“A woman, haa teketeka, an unfaithful woman, as usual,” replied Kahauiti. “Do you have issues with women on your island? Yes. It’s the same everywhere. There was peace between Atuona and Taaoa before this problem. When I was a kid, we were good friends. We used to visit each other across the hills. Many children were adopted, and Taaoa men took women from Atuona, and Atuona men took women from here. Some of these women had two, three, or even five men. One husband was the official father of her children in name and pride, even if he wasn’t really their father. The others shared her mat as she chose, but they had no claim or joy in the children.

“Now Pepehi (Beaten to Death) was from Taaoa, but he lived in Atuona with a woman. He had followed her over the hills and was living in her house. He was the father of her children. There was a man in Atuona, Kaheutahi, who was her husband but of lower status. He was not the father of her children. So one night, he struck Beaten to Death on the head with his war club and later invited a bunch of friends to the feast.”

Kahuiti smiled gently at me. Take off his tattoos, make him white, and dress him up! With his impressive posture, his smooth, cultured voice, and his commanding presence, he could have been Leopold, King of the Belgians, a top diplomat, a powerful financier. Still, I couldn't help but think about the deaths at the Stinking Springs. How could one explain his kind, open-hearted demeanor and cheerful laughter alongside such despicable cravings and actions? Yet generals send ten thousand men to certain and torturous deaths to achieve their objectives; that's the way of generals, the way they earn respect among their people.

“Killed by the war club of Kaheutahi and eaten by his friends, Beaten to Death was just a ghost, and Kaheutahi took his place and became the father of the children in the house. He claimed they were truly his, but men have always been boastful.”

The other old man, who didn’t say anything but was fully focused, lit a pipe and passed it to Kahuiti, who took a puff for a moment and then handed it to Strong in Battle. The story paused for a smoke break.

“Beaten to Death died by the club? He was rightly named,” I said. “His father was a prophet.”

Kahuiti started to chant in a strange monotone.

“Go! Go! One blow! Go! One blow! A blow goes! A hit goes!” was his chant. “That’s what the war-club said as it hit the head of Beaten to Death. That’s how the war-club speaks when it strikes. The bones of Beaten to Death were fishhooks before we learned of his death. Everyone in Taaoa was furious. The family of Beaten to Death demanded revenge. The priest went to the High Place, and when he came out, he ran all day up and down the valley until he collapsed, foaming at the mouth. The gods cried out for war, war against Atuona.

“But there was too much peace between us, too many men with Atuona women, too many Atuona children adopted by Taaoa women. The peace was happy, and there was no great warrior to motivate.”

“You had brave men and strong men back then,” I said, with a sigh for the things I missed out on by arriving late.

Tuitui! You filled my mouth with weeds!” Kahuiti shouted. “I can’t speak with your words. Ue te etau! By the great god of the dead! I was here before the French landed their canoe in the Marquesas. Our gods were powerful back then, but they became wood and stone when the tree-guns of the Farani roared and launched iron balls and fire into our valleys. The Christian god was more powerful than our gods, and a deadlier threat to humanity.”

“But beaten to death—?” I pressed.

“Beaten to Death was in the hearts of the men of Atuona, and they laughed at us. Our High Priest said that the Euututuki, the most secret god of the priests, commanded us to avenge the death of Beaten to Death. But it was the season for preserving the mei in pits. Additionally, the women of Atuona among us argued for peace, along with the women of Taaoa who had taken many children from Atuona as their own. So we pleaded with the highest gods to forgive us.”

“Women had a lot of power back then,” I said.

Kahuiti laughed.

“The French god and the priests of the Farani have taken it from them,” he said. “I remember when women were in charge. She had her husbands—two, four, five. She was in control. She would send two out fishing, one to gather coconuts or wood, and keep one around for entertainment. They came and went at her command. That was mea pe! Disgusting! Pee! There aren’t enough men to make a woman happy. Many brave men have died to make their women happy, but—” He let out a breath in disdain.

Strong in Battle said aside, in French:

“He was never second in the house. Kahauiti hated that kind of man. He was always first.”

“So the killing of Beaten to Death went unpunished?” I asked.

Epo! Don’t drink the coconut until you’ve climbed down from the tree! I mentioned that the warriors were held back by the women, and there wasn't a strong leader. Still, the drums sounded at night, and the fighters showed up. Do you know how the drums communicate?

His expression darkened, and his eyes gleamed against the backdrop of his tattoos.

“'Ohe te pepe! Ohe te pepe! Ohe te pepe!' said the drum named Peepee. 'Titiutiuti! Titiutiuti!' said the drum named Umi. Aue! Then the warriors arrived! They stood in the High Place at the end of the valley. Mehitete, the chief, addressed them. He said that they should head to Atuona and bring back bodies for feasting. The drums echoed night after night, and the chief spoke a lot, but there was no war.

“The High Priest went to the Pekia again, and when he left, he ran non-stop for two days and a night, until he collapsed, breathless, as if he were dead, with foam at his mouth. The gods were angry. Still, there was no war.”

“Then Tomefitu arrived from Vait-hua. He was the chief of that valley, having been adopted by a woman from Vait-hua, but both his father and mother were from Taaoa. He had heard about the killing of Beaten to Death, his relative, and he was filled with rage. Aue! The thunder in the heavens sounded like Tomefitu's voice when he was angry. The earth shook under his feet. He was familiar with the Farani and their tricks. He had firearms from the whalers and feared nothing except the Ghost Woman of the Night. Once again, the warriors gathered at the High Place, and now there were many drums.”

Kahuiti jumped up. He slammed his fist against the corner post of the hut. His eyes blazed.

“‘Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe!
 Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe!
 Tuti! Tuti! Tutuituiti!’”

“That was what the war drums communicated. The sound rolled from the Pekia, and every man who could throw a spear or wield a war club answered their call.”

Kahuiti's soul was captivated by the story. His voice had the deep tone of a cello, powerful, vibrant, and rich. He had experienced that strange past, and the things he remembered were cherished memories.

The sound of the drums, as he echoed them in the unique tone-words of Marquesan, sent a thrill through me. I heard the booming of the ten-foot war-drums, their deep and powerful call like the roaring of lions in the jungle. I saw the warriors with their coconut-wood spears and their deadly ironwood clubs, carved and shining with oil, their baskets of polished stones hanging from their waists, and their fiber slings, dancing in the sacred grove of the Pekia, its shadows illuminated by the flickering light of candlenuts and the fragrant sandalwood.

“‘I am the wind that brings down the mighty tree. I am the wave that fills the canoe and carries the people to the sharks!’ said Tomefitu. ‘The flesh of my relative feeds the men of Atuona, and the gods demand war!

“‘There’s a war!’ said Tomefitu. ‘We need to offer gifts to the gods. Five men will join me to go to Otoputo and collect the offerings. I will return with the bodies of six of the Atuona pigs. Get ready! After we’ve eaten, the chiefs of Atuona will come to Taaoa, and then you will fight!

“‘Get ready to dance. Sharpen the spears and collect stones for the slings. Koe, who is my guy, will be in charge while I’m away. I have spoken,’ said Tomefitu. That night, Tomefitu and I, along with four others, quietly made our way to Otoputo, the dividing rock that overlooks the valley of Taaoa on the right and Atuona on the left. There we hid among the rocks and bushes and watched the enemy’s movements. The man who wandered off from his group in search of food or to visit a friend, we ambushed and killed.”

“Thus we did to the six named by Tomefitu, and as we killed them, we sent them back by others to the High Place. There the warriors feasted on them and gained strength for battle.”

“Then, missing so many from their group, the leaders of Atuona came to Otoputo and shouted at us to tell them about the missing. We shouted back that those men had been cooked over the fire and eaten, and that’s what we would do to all the people of Atuona. And we laughed at them.”

Kahuiti let out a loud laugh at the thought of the trick played on those defeated enemies.

“But Tufetu, my friend Mouth of God’s grandfather?” I kept asking.

“Epo! There was a war. The men of Atuona gathered at Otupoto and charged at us. We confronted them at the Stinking Springs, where I killed Tufetu, the uncle of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick. I pierced him with my spear from the distance of a coconut tree. I was the best spear-thrower from Taaoa. We pushed the Atuonans through the gorge of the Stinking Springs and over the ridge, and I ate Tufetu's right arm, the one that had held the war club. That gives a man the strength of his enemy.”

He turned back to braiding the rope of faufee.

“O ia aneihe, I’m done,” he said. “Do you want to drink kava?”

“No, I will not drink kava,” I said firmly. “Kahuiti, isn’t it a good thing that we’ve stopped eating people?”

The majestic chief looked at me, his deep brown eyes appearing child-like against the blue ink surrounding them. For ten seconds, he stared at me, and then smiled hesitantly, much like Peter the fisherman might have when he was scolded for cutting off the ear of one of Judas' soldiers. He belonged to the old ways, and the changes of the new era hadn’t affected him. He didn’t answer my question but sipped from his bowl of kava.

The crime of Huahine for love of the Weaver of Mats; the story of Tahia's white man who was eaten; the disaster that happened to Honi, the white man who used his harpoon against his friends.

During my time away in Taaoa, crime and scandal erupted in my own valley. André Bauda met me on the beach road when I came back and shared the story. The giant Tahitian sailor from the schooner Papeite, Huahine, was in the local jail, charged with desertion— a serious offense. His defense? Love for a woman, and that woman was Weaver of Mats, who had her four names tattooed on her right arm.

Huahine, seeing her on the beach, felt a surge of love that pushed him to risk hungry sharks and crashing waves. Even during their initial meeting, he resisted the urge until the schooner was sailing out of the Bay of Traitors, heading with the breeze to the port of Tai-o-hae. Then he dove into the sea, swimming straight back to Atuona and reaching his sweetheart after a seven-hour battle with the currents and waves. Flag, the officer, found him in her hut and took him to jail.

The next morning, I went to his trial. He appeared before the judge dressed elegantly; in addition to a red pareu around his waist, he wore a pink silk shawl draped over his shoulders. Both items were gifts from Weaver of Mats, since he had arrived without any belongings. He didn’t need much clothing because his skin was very brown and his strong body was impressive.

He was a tolerable prisoner to Bauda, who oversaw the construction and repair of roads and bridges, so Huahine was swiftly sentenced and assigned to work alongside others who were paying their taxes with labor. Weaver of Mats moved in with him to the prison, where they lived together happily, cooking their meals in the garden and sleeping on mats under the palms.

On all the paepaes, it was said that Huahine would likely be sent to Tahiti, as there are strict laws against abandoning ships and against vagrancy in the Marquesas. Meanwhile, the prisoner was happy. Many Tahitian and white sailors look to these islands as a refuge from their troubles, and in Huahine's adventure, I see the story of many poor whites who, in the early days, left behind home, friends, and hard work to live here in a paradise filled with breadfruit and comfort.

“There is a story told a long time ago by a man from Hanamenu to a traveler named Christian,” I said to Haabunai, the carver, while we sat rolling pandanus cigarettes in the cool of the evening. “It goes like this:

“About thirty years ago, a sailor from a trading schooner that docked in the bay for sandalwood was mistreated by his captain, who denied him shore leave. Filled with anger, the sailor decided to leave his tough and unappreciated job, marry an island heiress, and live happily ever after. So, one evening he swam to shore, found a woman he liked, and was hidden by her until the ship left."

“Now Tahia was a great wife and loved her handsome white husband; she did everything a wife could do, cooking his meals, washing his feet, rolling cigarettes for him all day as he rested on the mats. But her father eventually became worried, and there was complaining among the people because the white man wouldn’t work.

“He wouldn’t climb the palm to gather the nuts; he just lay there, laughing on his paepae during the Meinui, the season of breadfruit, while everyone else was busy. And when they handed him some rusty old muskets to look after, he ignored them. Sometimes he went fishing, taking a canoe that Tahia paddled, and made her put the bait on the hook, but he rarely caught any fish.”

“‘Aue te hanahana, aua ho'i te kaikai,’ said his father-in-law. ‘He who doesn’t work, shouldn’t eat.’ But the white man laughed and ate without working.”

“A season passed and another, and there came a time of little rain. The bananas were few, and the breadfruit were not plentiful. One evening, therefore, the old men met in conference, and this was their decision: ‘Rats are becoming a nuisance, and we will get rid of them.’”

“Next morning, the father sent Tahia on an errand to another valley. Then, the men started digging a large oven in the ground in front of Tahia's house, where the white man was lounging on the mats. Soon, he noticed and wondered what was happening, then looked again. Finally, he got up and walked over to the oven, asking, ‘What’s going on?’”

“‘Lots of food. A big pig will come soon,’ they said.”

“So he stood waiting while they dug, and no pig showed up. Then he asked, ‘Where's the pig?’ At that moment, the u'u struck him on the head, making him fall lifeless and lie in the oven. Wood was stacked around him, and he was roasted, while there was a feast in Hanamenu.

“In the twilight, Tahia came over the hills, tired and hungry, and asked for her white man. ‘He has gone to the beach,’ they said."

“He’ll be back soon, so just sit down and eat, my daughter,” her father said, handing her the meat wrapped in leaves. She ate eagerly and waited for her husband. The other guests laughed at her, and gradually, she began to understand the truth. She said nothing, but left into the darkness.

“And it is written, Haabunai, that those searching for the mei found her the next day in the upper valley, and she was hanging from a tall palm tree with a purau rope around her neck.”

“That might be a true story,” said Haabunai. “But it's customary here to eat the eva when life makes someone sick. And very few white men have ever been eaten on the islands because they knew too much and were taken by some powerful woman.” He paused for a moment to puff on his cigarette.

“Now there was a sailor that my grandfather ate, and he was white. But there was plenty of reason for that, because never was a man so annoying.

“He was a harpooner on a whaling ship, a guy who made a lot of money, but he liked rum, and when his ship left, he stayed behind. They sent two boats to shore to look for him, but my grandfather sent my father with him into the hills, and after three days the captain thought he had drowned and sailed away without him.”

“My grandfather gave him my father's sister as a wife, and like the man you spoke of, he was very loved by her, even though he only made namu enata, drank it, danced, and slept. Grandfather said he could dance unusual sailor dances that made everyone laugh until their sides hurt.”

“This guy, named Honi—”

“Honi?” I said. “I don’t know that word.”

“Not me either. It’s not Marquesan. That was the name he went by on the ship.”

“Honi?” I said in disbelief, and then it clicked. “You mean Jones?”

“It might be. I'm not sure. Honi was his name, just like my grandfather said. This Honi had brought back from the whaling ship a gun and a harpoon. The harpoon had an iron head attached to a spear, with a long rope tied to the head, so when it was thrust into the whale, he was connected to the boat chasing him through the water. There was no weapon like it on the island, and everyone admired it a lot.”

“Honi fought alongside us when our tribe, the Papuaei, went to war with the Tiu of Taaoa. He used his gun and won many battles, until he had killed so many of the enemy that they asked for peace. Honi was celebrated by our tribe, and a beautiful house was built for him near the river, in the spot where eels and shrimp were plentiful.”

“In this big house, he drank more than he did in the smaller one. He used his gun to hunt pigs and even birds. My grandfather scolded him for wasting the ammunition when pigs could easily be killed with spears. But Honi wouldn’t listen, and he kept hunting until he ran out of powder. Then he argued with my grandfather, and one day, while drunk, he tried to kill him and then ran away to the Kau-i-te-oho, the tribe of redheaded people at Hanahupe.”

“After hearing that Honi was gone, the Tiu tribe of Taaoa declared war once more, and the red-headed tribe joined forces with them through intermarriage between their chiefs' families, which is how Honi ended up fighting alongside them. Since his gun was out of ammo, he grabbed his harpoon and joined the Tui and the Kau-i-te-oho at the boundary between the valleys where we used to battle."

“Where the cliffs rose high between the valleys, the tribes gathered and insulted each other.

“‘You guys with hair like cooked shrimp! Are you ready for the ovens of our valley?’ shouted my grandfather's warriors.

“‘You little guys, who run so fast, we now have your white warrior with us, and you’re going to die by the hundreds!’ yelled our enemies.”

This picture of the scene at the line was typical of Polynesian warfare. It closely resembles the army gatherings of long ago in Palestine and Syria, as well as before the walls of Troy. Goliath insulted David in a crude way, threatening to leave his body for the birds and beasts, and David responded in a similar fashion. So, when Ulysses threw his spear at Soccus, he shouted:

“For fifteen minutes,” said Haabunai, “my grandfather's people and the enemy's warriors shouted to each other from the top of the cliffs, and then Honi and my grandfather's brother, leaders from both sides, moved forward to fight.

“The first time Honi threw his harpoon, he caught my great-uncle. He hooked him in the middle, and before he could be rescued, a half dozen of the Tiu men pulled on the rope and dragged him over the line to be killed and eaten.

“Two more members of our tribe were caught by Honi with this wicked spear, and it wasn't just the death that bothered us, but the thought of being dragged over to them and roasted. The battle continued all day, except when both sides agreed to pause and eat popoi and take a break, but late in the afternoon, something strange happened.

“Honi had thrown his harpoon, but due to a poor aim, it got stuck in a tree. The line was wrapped around his left arm, and as he tried to pull the spearhead out of the wood, his legs got tangled in the rope. My grandfather, who was very strong, grabbed the rope near the tree, pulled the white man over the line, and killed him with a rock.”

“The enemy ran away then, and that night our people ate Honi. Grandfather said his meat was so tough they had to boil it. There were no tipoti (Standard-oil cans) back then, but our people used banana leaves to make a large cup that could hold a couple of quarts of water. They added red-hot stones to it, and the water boiled. Grandfather said they cut Honi into small pieces and boiled him in many of these cups. He was still tough, but they ate him anyway.”

“Honi was tattooed. Not like the Marquesans, but similar to some white sailors, he had certain marks on him. Grandfather saved these marks and wore them as a tiki, or amulet, until he died, when he gave it to me. He had preserved the skin so it wouldn’t spoil.”

Haabunai yawned and said his mouth was dry from all the talking, but when a glass of rum was put in front of him and he drank it, he went to his house to get the tiki. It was as big as my hand, dark and shriveled, but with a magnifying glass, I could see a rough cross and three letters, I H S in blue.

“Grandfather became a Christian and was no longer an enata Ttaikaia, an eater of men, but he always kept the tiki around his neck because he believed it gave him strength,” my guest said.

I handed him back the gruesome relic, even though he was trying to make it mine. He would have given up the full demijohn for the tiki that had belonged to his grandfather, but I wasn’t interested in it. You can buy purses made of human skin in Paris for not much more than one made of alligator hide.

“Honi must have been really tough,” I said.

“He must have been,” Haabunai said regretfully. “Grandfather kept his teeth until the end. He would never eat a child. Like all warriors, he preferred the meat of another fighter for the sake of vengeance.”

He hadn't yet revealed the dark joke that almost all cannibal stories have. I didn't ask if Honi's wife had eaten him, like Tahia did with her white man. It's likely that she did and that they tricked her. It was the prank of those times.

I had seen Apporo, my landlady, stumbling home a few days earlier in a sad state of drunkenness. Someone had given her a drink that was a mix of absinthe, vermouth, and rum, and trusting the person who gave it to her, she had gulped it down. That's the kind of prank that in the past would have tricked someone into eating the flesh of a lover or friend.

Reasoning from our perspective, it's easy to think that cannibalism is a form of depravity practiced by only a few cultures, but this misconception is corrected by the studies of ethnologists, who tell us that it was one of humanity's oldest customs and started when we were closely related to apes. When Livingstone encountered it in Africa, he concluded that the Negroes developed that horrific desire from their appreciation for the meat of gorillas, which are quite similar to humans in appearance. Herodotus, writing 2,500 years ago, mentions the Massagetae, who boiled the flesh of their elderly alongside that of cattle, both killed for the occasion. Cannibalism was a part of life for all cultures in the days of savagery.

Plutarch states that Catiline's followers showed their loyalty to him and to each other by sacrificing and consuming a man. Achilles wished to devour Hector. During the famine of 1857, the Kafirs resorted to eating their own children, and Germans turned on each other in madness from starvation, long after Maryland and Massachusetts had flourished as settlements in the New World. There's a historical account of a group of American pioneers lost in the mountains of California in the 19th century, who, in their desperate hunger, ended up eating several members of their party.

To consume deceased relatives, to kill and eat elders, to feast on slaves and captives, and even for mothers to eat their children were religious and tribal rituals for many tens of thousands of years. We have records of these customs occurring across vast regions of the world.

Undoubtedly, cannibalism began as a matter of food supply. In early times, when humans were just coming out of the purely animal stage and lacked farming skills, living in caves or trees, their fellow humans were the easiest source of food. The larger animals were too fierce and powerful for their weak weapons unless they got lucky, so the clan or family, or even an individual brave hunter, would seek out human meat through stealth or conflict, or in times of hardship, resort to eating those closest to them.

Especially among people whose main diet consists of heavy, starchy foods, like breadfruit, the craving for meat is strong. I saw Marquesan women eating insects, worms, and other disgusting bits of flesh out of pure instinct and hunger. When salt is unavailable, the desire for meat becomes even more intense. In these valleys, the upper tribes, whose enemies block their access to the sea with its salt and fish, were the most relentless cannibals. The same situation exists in Africa today, where the inland tribes consume any corpse, while none of the coastal tribes do.

As the obsession with cannibalistic feasts increased—and for some, it became an addiction similar to that of opium—the availability of other types of meat had little impact on its persistence. In New Britain, human bodies were sold in stores; in the Solomon Islands, victims were raised like livestock, and along the upper Congo, there is a systematic trade in these vacant shells of the human spirit.

Although cannibalism started as a physical need, humans quickly gave it emotional and spiritual significance, as they have done with all customs rooted in their physical existence. Two types of cannibalism appear to have existed among early historic peoples. One involved consuming relatives and close friends, either as an expression of friendship or to acquire some of their good qualities. For example, when babies died, Chavante mothers in Uruguay ate them to reclaim their souls. Russians consumed their fathers, and the Irish, according to Strabo, believed it was beneficial to eat both deceased parents. The Lhopa of Sikkim, in Tibet, eat the bride's mother during the wedding feast.

But Māori cannibalism, best illustrated in the Marquesas, stemmed from a desire for revenge; cooking and eating someone's enemy was considered the ultimate insult. It was a form of jingoism, a deep-seated hatred for anyone outside their tribe or valley, leading to almost constant feuds between valleys.

It wasn't wrong at all, because morals are just the best traditions and practices of each culture, and here, the consumption of enemies was accepted by every teaching of priests and leaders, established customs, and the most powerful rules of nature.

White men and Chinese people, in fact, all foreigners, were rarely eaten here. There were exceptions when revenge motivated it, like in the case of Honi or Jones, whom Haabunai's grandfather ate, but generally, they were spared and even valued as unusual visitors who could teach the locals useful things. It was only their own corruption that led them to the oven.

At times like this, the feast felt more like an unpleasant ritual. The Marquesan didn’t like the taste of white man's meat. They said it was too salty. Hundreds of years ago, the Aztecs, as reported by Bernal Diaz, who witnessed it, complained that “the flesh of the Spaniards didn’t even provide sustenance because it was unbearably bitter.” This was happening while the Indians were starving to death by the hundreds of thousands during the brutal siege of Mexico City.

Standards of brutality differ. Horrible and repulsive as the idea of cannibalism is to us, it's important to remember that it was based on a perspective toward outsiders and slaves that still exists to some extent everywhere in the world. Outside the tribe, the savage saw no shared humanity. Members of every clan except his own were viewed as strange and contemptible beings, unusual and barbaric in their behaviors and customs, not considered as sharing a common heritage. This perspective toward outsiders did not stop the cannibal from being, within his own tribe, a kind, cheerful, and friendly person.

Even towards strangers, the Marquesan never committed any form of torture. Although they killed and consumed their enemies, they lacked the cruel sophistication of the Romans, not even scalping their foes like the Scythians, Visigoths, Franks, and Anglo-Saxons. During their bloodiest battles, they often took breaks to allow their adversaries time to eat and rest. There’s no record of them surrounding a valley with armed warriors and letting women and children starve inside. Victims for the gods were killed without warning, so they wouldn't suffer even a moment of dread. The thumb-screw and rack of Christianity horrified my cannibal friends when I mentioned them.

The unforgettable game for the matches in the coconut grove of Lam Kai Oo.

Parables are commonly found in books. In just a few words on a printed page, one can see a universal problem illustrated clearly and simply, free from the big uncertainties and random events that make life so confusing overall. I had the chance to witness, in the valley of Atuona on Hiva-oa, a series of events that were incredibly chaotic and funny at the time, but which gradually formed into a parable as I later reflected on them while sitting on the leaf-covered paepae of the House of the Golden Bed.

They started one afternoon when I went to the palace to smoke a cigarette with M. L'Hermier des Plantes, the governor. As I climbed the steps, I saw the governor, looking serious but sweating, in his white pants, facing a pale stranger on crutches who was begging in every tone of anguish for something he had been denied.

“Non! No! Ned!” said the governor, insisting in multiple languages. “It can't be done!” He sank into a chair and poured himself a shot of Pernod, as the defeated suitor turned to me in despair.

He was short with a yellowish tint to his skin, and his soft brown eyes were slightly askew. Even though he was lame, he had a level of alertness and grace that was uncommon among the sea's offspring from these beaches. He explained in Tahitian, Marquesan, and French, with the occasional English word, that he was a Tahitian stranded on Hiva-oa from a schooner because of a broken leg and wanted to pass the boredom of his exile with a simple card game.

“I just need your permission to buy two packs of cards from the Chinese shop,” he pleaded. “I want to teach my neighbors here the game of pokaree. I learned it on a trip to San Francisco. It's American. It's like life, not just about luck. You have to think carefully to play it. I'm sure you know that game.”

Now gambling is banned on these islands. It’s said that in the southern oceans, the people became so obsessed with the white men's games of chance that to prevent ongoing bloodshed from fights, the conquerors imposed a strict ban. Naturally, white people are always exempt from these sin-restraining rules, and merchants maintain a small supply of cards for their enjoyment.

“But why two packs?” I asked the annoyed Tahitian.

“But, sir, that's how I was taught. We played with ten or fourteen in the circle, and since it's just to pass the time, more of my poor brother Kanakas can join in with two packs.”

He felt utterly humiliated, because no Tahitian refers to themselves as “Kanaka.” It's a derogatory term. They might use it for someone else, but only like an American Black person uses the term “nigger.”

I studied him intently. A certain gesture, the way his eyebrows slanted, his thin lips, reminded me of a guy I once knew in Canton, who led me into trouble and said, “Mr. Rud Kipping has been here before.”

“What's your name?” I asked, hoping for confirmation.

“O Lalala,” he replied, while the smile that began in his eyes faded as his lips tightened. “I am French, because my grandfather was from Annam under the tri-color, and my mother was from Tahiti-iti.”

Now, fourteen-handed poker, with O Lalala teaching those who didn’t know the game, which was created by a United States diplomat, felt like more than just a way to pass the time. It would be an event in the valley. My sense of patriotism was ignited. I pulled the governor aside.

“This poker,” I said, “is different from écarté or baccarat. It’s a test of character, a clash of minds, something we Americans call bluff. These poor Marquesans deserve to have some fun. Let him go for it! Nothing bad will happen. It’s a long way to Paris, where the laws are made.”

The governor turned to O Lalala.

"No stakes!" he said.

“But no! Not a penny!” the lame man promised. “We will use only matches as counters. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Administrator! You are very generous. Please, can you give me the note to Ah You now?”

As he walked off with it, the governor poured me a shot of absinthe.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “Oh wow! Oh, wow, wow, wow!” He burst into laughter. “Is he going to play the bluff?”

I spent that evening with Kriech, the German trader from Taka-Uka. Over our Hellaby beef and Munich beer, we talked about copra and the beautiful girls of Budapest, about the French government's plan to take over the island trade by funding a corporation, and about what happened that afternoon.

“The Herr Doktor is new,” said Kriech, shaking his head. “That O Lalala! I’ve heard that poker is very dangerous. That Prince Hanoi of Papeite lost his temper to a Chinaman. Something comes of this foolishness!”

At midnight, I had once again reached the House of the Golden Bed and lay down to sleep when I heard a strangely familiar sound in the breeze from up the valley. I sat up, listening. In the dark silence, with no wind to rustle the breadfruit and coconut trees, and just the brook faintly murmuring below, I heard a low babble of voices. No word was clear, not even the language, yet oddly the sound had a rhythm that I recognized.

I have heard preaching from afar in many languages. Even though I could only catch the rhythms, pauses, and melodies, I had no trouble understanding where they came from and what they meant. Thoughts shape all speech. Now my sleepy mind drifted back to my American days, to memories of homes and clubs.

I got up, tied the loincloth around me, and headed out with a lantern to find that sound. It took me down the path, across the stream, and up the hill into the thick greenery of the mountainside. In the distance, I spotted lights in the coconut grove of Lam Kai Oo.

My bare feet were silent as I looked through the underbrush at a scene as strange as anything that ever fascinated someone who loves the bizarre. A bunch of torches illuminated a cleared area between the tall palm trees, and in the flickering red light, several naked, tattooed figures crouched around a shiny mat made of sugar cane. Around them, large stacks of yellow Swedish matches caught the light, and on the cane mat, the red, white, and black of the cards were sparkling.

O Lalala sat across from me, completely focused on the game. Behind him, the yellow boxes were stacked high, with his crutch leaning against them, and he kept speeding up the game by shouting, “Passy, calley or makum bigger!” “Comely center!” or, “Ante uppy!”

These were the sounds that had pulled my memory back to civilization and brought me out of my Golden Bed. O Lalala had all the slang of poker—the poker from the waterfronts of San Francisco and Shanghai—and clearly, he had already taught his eager students that lingo.

They gathered around the mat, leaning in with excitement, and the flickering light revealed distorted mouths and eyes surrounded by tattoos. Above them, the torches flared, held by eager spectators. The candlenuts, strung on long coconut fronds, burned for only a few seconds, but each one that went out lit up the one below it as it sputtered, creating a continuous but unsteady light on the shiny mat and the cards.

The midnight darkness of the surrounding grove and the shadowy palm trees, supporting the rustling canopy that concealed the sky, suggested a massive cathedral where pagan ceremonies took place.

I pushed through the crowd of onlookers, none of whom noticed me, and found Apporo and Exploding Eggs holding torches. They were caught up in the excitement of the game. The dullness of everyday life was gone; as they danced, their bright eyes were fixed on the changes in luck before them. I spoke sharply twice before they finally heard me, and then in a desperate plea, Apporo threw herself at me.

Would I not give her matches—the packets of matches that were under the Golden Bed? She and her husband, Great Fern, had spent just an hour in the magic circle before they ran out of matches. Couriers were currently searching the valley for more matches. Hurry, quick! The packets under the Golden Bed might be gone already!

“Surely, then, come,” I said, struck by an incredible possibility. Could it be that the clever O Lalala—ridiculous! But Apporo, hurrying ahead of me down the lantern-lit path, confirmed my suspicions.

O Lalala had declared and enforced the ban on any other stakes aside from the innocent matches—just counters—he had mentioned to the governor. But quick messengers announced throughout the valley that there would be gambling—authorized by the government—in Lam Kai Go's plantation, and the cards had already been shuffled for seven or eight hours. Across all of Atuona, matches had taken on an extraordinary and heightened value. The shout of “Matches!” echoed even to the furthest huts on the edge of the valley. And as soon as they showed up, O Lalala won them.

We rushed into my cabin, and Apporo was under the Golden Bed before the light from my lantern hit the floor. The packets were gone.

“Exploding Eggs!” shouted Apporo, her dark eyes blazing with anger.

“But—he’s honest,” I objected.

In such a crisis, she whispered, all standards meant nothing. Exploding Eggs had been one of the first squatters at the sugarcane mat. “The Bishop himself would swap the holy-water fonts for matches if he were as eager to play as I am!”

There were no more matches left in the valleys of Atuona or Taka-Uka, she said. Every dealer was sold out. Every house had been rummaged through. The losers had begged, borrowed, or traded valuable items for matches. The cursed Tahitian had nearly all of them, except for a few still being fought over. Defeated players were currently sprinting over the mountains in the dark, searching through each hut for more.

The reputation of Hiva-oa, and the island itself, was on the line. A foreigner had disrespected their people, or would if they didn’t reclaim what he had taken from them. She was half Chinese; her father's legacy was at stake. He had passed away in this very room. To honor him in death, she was willing to give up even her stake in the Golden Bed; she would promise everything that Great Fern owned, if I would just give her a few matches.

Her pleas were completely hopeless. There wasn't a match in the cabin.

Together we went back to the coconut grove. O Lalala still sat there calmly winning the matches, with panting newcomers occasionally bringing in more supplies. He cleared the mat each time there was a valuable pot.

His only clear advantage was that he set the rules whenever questions came up. He was patient in all arguments, giving in on small issues, but he stood firm like the granite rocks of the mountain above when significant stakes were involved. With seriousness, he called upon the name of Hoy-lee, the mysterious figure who had permanently established the tapus of pokaree. He made a secret gesture with his thumb against his nose, and that was that. If anyone continued to challenge this tiki, he would add his other thumb to the little finger of his first gesture and say, “Got-am-to-hellee!” As a final measure, he would lift his crutch and, backed by public opinion, threaten to enforce the law against gambling and end the game if the arguments didn't stop.

Steadily, the pile of Swedish toendstikkers grew behind him. All through the night, the game continued under the light of the candlenuts, in a silence interrupted only by the heavy breathing of the crouching brown men, the soft rustle of the palm fronds above, and shouts of “Ante uppy!” or “Comely center!” When dawn broke grayly through the rows of the grove, they stopped briefly to eat a bowl of popoi and drink the milk from freshly gathered nuts. O Lalala, leaning back against his stack of winnings, lifted a shell to his lips and cast me a mysterious glance over its rim.

Whistling softly, I went down to the House of the Golden Bed, had breakfast there without the help of Exploding Eggs, and then looked for the governor. He had taken Special Agent Bauda's whale boat to a nearby deserted island to hunt kuku. Hiva-oa was without a government.

All day, chaos erupted in the coconut grove. In the afternoon, the vicar apostolic of the Roman Catholic Church, backed by the loyal Deacon Fariuu, struggled up the slope to put an end to the game. The bishop was met with cold silence from the regular churchgoers. A catechist he found sitting on the mat ignored his scolding, only asking the bishop not to stand behind him because O Lalala had said that would bring bad luck. The churchmen left in a proud silence that went unnoticed by the engrossed players.

Later, the deacon returned, bringing with him the very matches that had been kept in the church to light the lamps for the night service. He stacked them on the sugarcane mat. The vicar bishop followed him to call down the anathema maranatha of high heaven upon this renegade who had robbed the cathedral and the priests' house of every toendstikker they had. After he had left, the deacon, dropping his last box on the woven table, raised his hands toward the sky and fervently asked the Giver of All Good Things to help him draw. But he drew a third ace, only to see O Lalala put down four of the cursed pieces of paper, each with three spots on them.

At three o'clock the next morning, the game stopped because the Tahitian had all the tokens. He sent them to his house, where a friend kept watch over them. For a day, he waited by the sugar-cane mat, and the Monte Carlo remained busy. O Lalala refused to give in to the demands of a hundred losers who wanted him to sell back packs of matches for coconuts, French francs, or any other currency. He turned down pigs, fish, canned goods, and everything else from the stores as he believed it would betray the kind governor, who would understand that while matches weren't considered gambling stakes, everything else was.

On the fourth day, the canoes that had paddled and sailed to every other island in the archipelago started to come back. Some brought fifty packets, while others brought less. Dealers had raised their prices significantly when asked to sell their entire stock.

Now the game started up again with the intensity of a typhoon after the eye has passed. Men and women lined up for the chance to change their luck, to vent their anger, to earn applause. At one point, they believed they had defeated the Tahitian. He began to lose, and before his string of bad luck was over, he had sent more than thirty packages from his hut to the grove. But this was just a small setback; his luck turned around again, and the contents of the canoes were his.

On the fifth day, it was discovered that the Shan-Shan syndicate from Cantonese still had one case of toendstikkers left. They claimed they had overlooked this case until now. It contained a hundred packages, or twelve hundred boxes. It was invaluable as the only potential safeguard against the complete end of the game.

The Shan-Shan people were heartless. They demanded five francs for a packet of the case. Many of the younger Marquesans suggested showing the Cantonese the ancient u'u, the war club of a past generation. However desperate the situation was for the older gamblers, they wouldn't agree to it. The governor would return, the law would take its course, and they would end up in Noumea living out their lives for their crimes. No, they would buy the case for francs, but they wouldn’t risk sharing it among many, who would be torn apart piece by piece by the wicked O Lalala.

“Kivi, the Vagabond, the Drinker of kava, is the leader for our cause,” said Great Fern. “He has never attended the Christian church. He still believes in the old gods of the High Place, and he has a shark tattoo.”