Two cocoanuts, sharply sweet, served for drink.
There were bananas that tasted like strawberries and that melted in
the mouth, and there was banana-poi that made one regret that his
Yankee forebears ever attempted puddings.
Then there was boiled
yam, boiled taro, and roasted feis, which last are nothing more or
less than large mealy, juicy, red-coloured cooking bananas. We
marvelled at the abundance, and, even as we marvelled, a pig was
brought on, a whole pig, a sucking pig, swathed in green leaves and
roasted upon the hot stones of a native oven, the most honourable
and triumphant dish in the Polynesian cuisine. And after that came
coffee, black coffee, delicious coffee, native coffee grown on the
hillsides of Tahaa.
Tehei's fishing-tackle fascinated me, and after we arranged to go
fishing, Charmian and I decided to remain all night. Again Tehei
broached Samoa, and again my petit bateau brought the disappointment
and the smile of acquiescence to his face. Bora Bora was my next
port. It was not so far away but that cutters made the passage back
and forth between it and Raiatea. So I invited Tehei to go that far
with us on the Snark. Then I learned that his wife had been born on
Bora Bora and still owned a house there. She likewise was invited,
and immediately came the counter invitation to stay with them in
their house in Born Bora. It was Monday. Tuesday we would go
fishing and return to Raiatea. Wednesday we would sail by Tahaa and
off a certain point, a mile away, pick up Tehei and Bihaura and go
on to Bora Bora. All this we arranged in detail, and talked over
scores of other things as well, and yet Tehei knew three phrases in
English, Charmian and I knew possibly a dozen Tahitian words, and
among the four of us there were a dozen or so French words that all
understood. Of course, such polyglot conversation was slow, but,
eked out with a pad, a lead pencil, the face of a clock Charmian
drew on the back of a pad, and with ten thousand and one gestures,
we managed to get on very nicely.
At the first moment we evidenced an inclination for bed the visiting
natives, with soft Iaoranas, faded away, and Tehei and Bihaura
likewise faded away. The house consisted of one large room, and it
was given over to us, our hosts going elsewhere to sleep. In truth,
their castle was ours. And right here, I want to say that of all
the entertainment I have received in this world at the hands of all
sorts of races in all sorts of places, I have never received
entertainment that equalled this at the hands of this brown-skinned
couple of Tahaa. I do not refer to the presents, the free-handed
generousness, the high abundance, but to the fineness of courtesy
and consideration and tact, and to the sympathy that was real
sympathy in that it was understanding. They did nothing they
thought ought to be done for us, according to their standards, but
they did what they divined we waited to be done for us, while their
divination was most successful. It would be impossible to enumerate
the hundreds of little acts of consideration they performed during
the few days of our intercourse. Let it suffice for me to say that
of all hospitality and entertainment I have known, in no case was
theirs not only not excelled, but in no case was it quite equalled.
Perhaps the most delightful feature of it was that it was due to no
training, to no complex social ideals, but that it was the untutored
and spontaneous outpouring from their hearts.
The next morning we went fishing, that is, Tehei, Charmian, and I
did, in the coffin-shaped canoe; but this time the enormous sail was
left behind. There was no room for sailing and fishing at the same
time in that tiny craft. Several miles away, inside the reef, in a
channel twenty fathoms deep, Tehei dropped his baited hooks and
rock-sinkers. The bait was chunks of octopus flesh, which he bit
out of a live octopus that writhed in the bottom of the canoe. Nine
of these lines he set, each line attached to one end of a short
length of bamboo floating on the surface. When a fish was hooked,
the end of the bamboo was drawn under the water. Naturally, the
other end rose up in the air, bobbing and waving frantically for us
to make haste. And make haste we did, with whoops and yells and
driving paddles, from one signalling bamboo to another, hauling up
from the depths great glistening beauties from two to three feet in
length.
Steadily, to the eastward, an ominous squall had been rising and
blotting out the bright trade-wind sky. And we were three miles to
leeward of home. We started as the first wind-gusts whitened the
water. Then came the rain, such rain as only the tropics afford,
where every tap and main in the sky is open wide, and when, to top
it all, the very reservoir itself spills over in blinding deluge.
Well, Charmian was in a swimming suit, I was in pyjamas, and Tehei
wore only a loin-cloth. Bihaura was on the beach waiting for us,
and she led Charmian into the house in much the same fashion that
the mother leads in the naughty little girl who has been playing in
mud-puddles.
It was a change of clothes and a dry and quiet smoke while kai-kai
was preparing. Kai-kai, by the way, is the Polynesian for "food" or
"to eat," or, rather, it is one form of the original root, whatever
it may have been, that has been distributed far and wide over the
vast area of the Pacific. It is kai in the Marquesas, Raratonga,
Manahiki, Niue, Fakaafo, Tonga, New Zealand, and Vate.
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