By Reef and Palm, George Lewis Becke [summer reading list .txt] 📗

time six years ago when he sailed from Auckland on that fateful voyage in the DORIS. It was his first voyage as captain, and the ship was his own, and even now he remembers with a curious time-dulled pang the last words of his only sister--the Doris after whom he had called his new ship--as she had kissed him farewell--"I am so glad, Fred, to hear them call you 'Captain Brantley.'"

And the voyage--the wild feverish desire to make a record passage to 'Frisco and back; the earnest words of poor old white-headed Lutton, the mate, "not to carry on so at night going through the Paumotu Group"; that awful midnight crash when the DORIS ran hopelessly into the wild boil of roaring surf on Tuanake Reef; the white, despairing faces of five of his men, who, with curses in their eyes upon his folly, were swept out of sight into the awful blackness of the night. And then the days in the boat with the six survivors! Ah! the memory of that will chill his blood to his dying day. Men have had to do that which he and the two who came through alive with him had done.

How long they endured that black agony of suffering he knew not. By common consent none of them ever spoke of it again.

Three months after they had drifted ashore, a passing sperm whaler, cruising through the group, took away the two seamen, and then Brantley, after bidding them a silent farewell, had, with bitter despair gnawing at his heart, turned his face away from the ship, and walked back into the palm-shaded village.

* * * * *


"I will never go back again," he had said to himself. And perhaps he was right; for when the DORIS went to pieces on Tuanake his hope and fortunes went with her, and, save for that other Doris, there was no one in the world who cared for him. He was not the man to face the world again with: "Why, he lost his first ship!" whispered among his acquaintances.

And this is how Brantley--young, handsome, and as smart a seaman (save for that one fatal mistake) as ever trod a deck--became Paranili the PAPALAGI, and was living out his life among the people of solitary Vahitahi.

* * * * *


Ere a year had passed a trading captain bound to the Gambier Islands had given him a small stock of trade goods, and the thought of Doris had been his salvation. Only for her he would have sunk to the life of a mere idle, gin-drinking, and dissolute beach-comber. As it was, his steady, straightforward life among the people of the island was a big factor to his business success. And so every year he sent money to Doris by some passing whaler or Tahitian trading schooner, but twice only had he got letters from her; and each time she had said: "Let me come to you, Fred. We are alone in the world, and may never meet again else. Sometimes I awake in the night with a sudden fear. Let me come; my heart is breaking with the loneliness of my life here, so far away from you."

* * * * *


But two years ago he had done that which would keep Doris from ever coming to him, he thought. He had married a young native girl--that is, taken her to wife in the Paumotuan fashion--and surely Doris, with her old-fashioned notions of right and wrong, would grieve bitterly if she knew it.

Presently he rose, talking to himself as is the wont of those who have lived long apart from all white associations, and sauntered up and down the shady path at the side of his dwelling, thinking of Doris, and if he would ever see her again. Then he entered the house.

* * * * *


Seated on the matted floor with her face turned from him was a young native girl--Luita, his wife. She was making a hat from the bleached strands of the pandanus leaf, and as she worked she sang softly to herself in the semi-Tahitian tongue of her people.

Brantley, lazily stretching himself out on a rough mat-covered couch, turned towards her, and watched the slender, supple fingers--covered, in Polynesian fashion, with heavy gold rings--as they deftly drew out the snow-white strands of the pandanus. The long, glossy, black waves of hair that fell over her bare back and bosom like a mantle of night hid her face from his view, and the man let his glance rest in contented admiration upon the graceful curves of the youthful figure; then he sighed softly, and again his eyes turned to the wide, sailless expanse of the Pacific, that lay shimmering and sparkling before him under a cloudless sky of blue, and he thought again of Doris.

* * * * *


Steadily the little hands worked in and out among the snowy strands, and now and then, as she came to the TARI, or refrain, of the old Paumotuan love-song, her soft liquid tones would blend with the quavering treble of children that played outside.


"Terunavahori, teeth of pearl,
Knit the sandals for Talaloo's feet,
Sandals of AFA thick and strong,
Bind them well with thy long black hair."


Suddenly the song ceased, and with a quick movement of her shoulders she threw back the cloud of hair that fell around her arms and bosom, looked up at Brantley and laughed, and, striking the mat on which she sat with her open palm, said--

"HAERE MAI, PARANILI."

He rose from the couch and stooped beside her, with his hands resting on his knees, and bending his brow in mock criticism, regarded her handiwork intently.

Springing to her feet, hat in hand, and placing her two hands on his now erect shoulders, she looked into his face--darker far than her own--and said with a smile--

"Behold, Paranili, thy PULOU is finished, save for a band of black PU'AVA which thou shalt give me from the store."

"Mine?" said Brantley, in pretended ignorance. "Why labour so for me? Are there not hats in plenty on Vahitahi?"

"True, O thankless one! but the women of the village say that thou lookest upon me as a fool because I can neither make mats nor do many other things such as becometh a wife. And for this did Merani, my cousin, teach me how to make a wide hat of FALA to shield thy face from the sun when thou art out upon the pearling grounds. AI-E-EH! my husband, but thy face and neck and hands are as dark as those of the people of Makatea--they who are for ever in their canoes.... See, Paranili, bend thy head. AI-E-EH! thou art a tall man, my husband," and she trilled a happy, rippling laugh as she placed the hat on his head.

He placed one hand around the pliant waist and under the mantle of hair, and drew her towards him, and then, moved by a sudden emotion, kissed her soft, red lips.

"Luita," he asked, "would it hurt thee if I were to go away?"

The girl drew away from him, and, for the first time in two years Brantley saw an angry flush tinge her cheek a dusky red.

* * * * *


"Ah!"--the contemptuous ring in her voice made the man's eyes drop--"thou art like all White Men--was there ever one who was faithful? What other woman is it that thou desirest? Is it Nia of Ahunui--she who, when thy boat lay anchored in the lagoon, swam off at night and asked thee for thy love--the shameless Nia?"

The angry light in the black eyes shone fiercely, and the dull red on her cheeks had changed to the livid paleness of passion.

Brantley, holding the rim of the hat over his mouth, laughed secretly, pleased at her first outburst of jealousy. Then his natural manliness asserted itself.

"Come here," he said.

Somewhat sullenly the girl obeyed and edged up beside him with face bent down. He put his hand upon hers, and for a few seconds looked at the delicate tracery of tattooing that, on the back, ran in thin blue lines from the finger tips to the wrists.

"What a d----d pity!" he muttered to himself; "this infernal tattooing would give the poor devil away anywhere in civilization. Her skin is not as dark as that pretty creole I was so sweet on in Galveston ten years ago ... Well, she's good enough for a broken man like me--but I can't take her away--that's certain."

A heavy tear splashed on his hand, and then he pulled her to him, almost savagely.

"See, Luita. I did but ask to try thee. Have no fear. Thy land is mine for ever."

The girl looked up, and in an instant her face, wet with tears, was laid against his breast. Still caressing the dark head that lay upon his chest, Brantley stooped and whispered something. The little tattooed hand released its clasp of his arm and struck him a playful blow.

"And would that bind thee more to me, and to the ways of these our people of Vahitahi," she asked, with still buried face.

"Aye," answered the ex-captain slowly, "for I have none but thee in the world to care for."

She turned her face up. "Is there none--not even one woman in far-off Beretania, whose face comes to thee in the darkness."

Brantley shook his head sadly. Of course there was Doris, he thought, but he had never spoken of her. Sometimes when the longing to see her again would come upon him, he would have talked of her to his native wife, but he was by nature an uncommunicative man, and the thought of how Doris must feel her loneliness touched him with remorse and made him silent.

* * * * *


Another year passed, and matters had gone well with Brantley. Ten months before he had dropped on one of the best patches of shell in the Paumotus, and to-day, as he sits writing and smoking in the big room of his house, he looks contentedly out through the open door to a little white painted schooner that lay at anchor on the calm waters of the lagoon. He had just come back from Tahiti with her, and the two thousand dollars he had paid for the vessel was an easy matter for a man who was now making a thousand dollars a month.

"What a stroke of luck!" he writes to Doris. "Had I gone back to Sydney, where would I be now?--a mate, I suppose, on some deep-sea ship, earning twelve or fourteen pounds a month. Another year or two like this, and I can go back a made man. Some day, my dear, I may; but I will come back here again. The ways of the people have become my ways."

* * * * *


He laid down his pen and came to the door, and stood thinking awhile and listening to the gentle rustle of the palms as they swayed their lofty plumes to the breezy trade wind.

"Yes," he thought, "I would like to go and see Doris, but I can't take Luita, and so it cannot be. How that girl suspects me even now. When I went to Tahiti to buy the schooner, I believe she thought she would never see me again.... What a fool I am! Doris is all right, I suppose, although it is