While On The Way To The Cutter We Met The Only White Man On Tahaa,
And Of All Men, George Lufkin, A Native Of New England!
Eighty-six
years of age he was, sixty-odd of which, he said, he had spent in
the Society Islands, with occasional absences, such as the gold rush
to Eldorado in 'forty-nine and a short period of ranching in
California near Tulare.
Given no more than three months by the
doctors to live, he had returned to his South Seas and lived to
eighty-six and to chuckle over the doctors aforesaid, who were all
in their graves. Fee-fee he had, which is the native for
elephantiasis and which is pronounced fay-fay. A quarter of a
century before, the disease had fastened upon him, and it would
remain with him until he died. We asked him about kith and kin.
Beside him sat a sprightly damsel of sixty, his daughter. "She is
all I have," he murmured plaintively, "and she has no children
living."
The cutter was a small, sloop-rigged affair, but large it seemed
alongside Tehei's canoe. On the other hand, when we got out on the
lagoon and were struck by another heavy wind-squall, the cutter
became liliputian, while the Snark, in our imagination, seemed to
promise all the stability and permanence of a continent. They were
good boatmen. Tehei and Bihaura had come along to see us home, and
the latter proved a good boatwoman herself. The cutter was well
ballasted, and we met the squall under full sail. It was getting
dark, the lagoon was full of coral patches, and we were carrying on.
In the height of the squall we had to go about, in order to make a
short leg to windward to pass around a patch of coral no more than a
foot under the surface. As the cutter filled on the other tack, and
while she was in that "dead" condition that precedes gathering way,
she was knocked flat. Jib-sheet and main-sheet were let go, and she
righted into the wind. Three times she was knocked down, and three
times the sheets were flung loose, before she could get away on that
tack.
By the time we went about again, darkness had fallen. We were now
to windward of the Snark, and the squall was howling. In came the
jib, and down came the mainsail, all but a patch of it the size of a
pillow-slip. By an accident we missed the Snark, which was riding
it out to two anchors, and drove aground upon the inshore coral.
Running the longest line on the Snark by means of the launch, and
after an hour's hard work, we heaved the cutter off and had her
lying safely astern.
The day we sailed for Bora Bora the wind was light, and we crossed
the lagoon under power to the point where Tehei and Bihaura were to
meet us. As we made in to the land between the coral banks, we
vainly scanned the shore for our friends.
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