THE SOUTH SEAS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 9321, 16 June 1891, Page 4

THE SOUTH SEAS.

[copyright.]

By Robert Louis Stevenson. Author of * Treasure Island,’ ' * Kidnapped,’ ‘The Strange Story of Dr Jekyll and Air Hyde,' etc. Part X. CHAPTER XIII, THE TWO CHIEFS OF ATUONA. It bad chaooed (aa the Casco beat through the Bordelais Straits for Taahauka) sb© approached on one board very near the land in the opposite Ule of Tauata, where houses were to be seen in a grove of tall cocoa palms. Brother Michael pointed oat the spot. *lam at home row/said be. ‘I believe 1 have a large share in these cocoa* nuta ; and in that house, madame, my mother lives with her two husbands V ‘With two husbands?’ somebody inquired. ‘ C’eat tna bonfe,’ replied the brother dryly. A word in passing on the two husbands. I conceive the brother to have expressed himself loosely. It seems common enough to Sod a native lady with two consorts; but these are not two husbands. The first is still the husband ; the wife continues to be referred to by bis name; and the position of the coadjutor, or pikio, although quite regular, appears undoubtedly subordinate. We bad opportunities to observe one household of the sort. The pikio was recognised j appeared openly aloug with the husband when the lady was thought to be insulted, and the pair made common cause like brothers. At home the inequality was more apparent. The husband sat to re* ceivo and entertain visitors, the pikio was running the while to fetch cocoanuta like a hired servant, and I remarked ho was sent on these errands in preference even to the son. Plainly we have here no second husband ; plainly we have the tolerated lover. Only, in the Marquesas, instead of carrying his lady’s fan and mantle, be must turn his hand to do the husband’s housework.

The sight of Brother Michael’s family estate led the conversation for some while upon the method and consequence of artificial kinship. Our curiosity became ex. tremely whetted j the brother offered to have the whole of ns adopted, and some two days later we became accordingly the children of Paaaeua, appointed chief of Atuona. 1 was unable to be present at the ceremony, which was primitively simple. The two, Mrs Stevenson and Mr Osbourne, along wth Paaaeua, his wife, and an adopted child of theirs, son of a shipwrecked Austrian, sat down to an excellent island meal, of which the principal and only dish was pig. A concourse watched them through tho apertures of the bouse, but none, not even brother Michael, might partake ; for the meal was sacramental, and either creative or declaratory of the new relationship. In Tahiti, things are not so strictly ordered. When Ori and I ‘made brothers,’ both our families sat with us at table, yet only he and I, who bad eaten with intention, were supposed to be affected by the ceremony, For the adoption of an infant, 1 believe no formality to be required. The child is handed over by the natural parents, and grows up to inherit the estates of the adoptive. Presents are doubtless exchanged, aa at all junctures of island life, social or international, but I never heard of any banquet—the child’s presence at the daily board perhaps sufficing. We may find the rationale in the ancient Arabian idea that a common diet makes a common blood, with its derivative axiom that ‘He is the father who gives the child its morning draught.’ In the Marqucsau practice, the sense would thus bo evanescent.* From tho Tahitian, a mere survival, it will have entirely fled. An interesting parallel will probably occur to many of my readers. What is the nature of the obligation assumed at such a festival? It will vary with the characters of those engaged, and with the circumstances of the case. Thus it would be absurd to take too seriously our adoption at Atuona. On the part of Paaaeua it was an affair of social ambition ; when he agreed to receive us in his family the man had not so much aa seen U 3, and knew only that we were inestimably rich and travelled in a floating palace. We, upon our. side, ate of his baked meats with no true animus affiliandi, but moved by the single sentiment of curiosity. The i|ffair was formal, and a matter of parade, as when in Europe sovereigns call each other cousin. Yet, had we staved at Atuona, Paaaeua would have hold himself bound to establish us upon his land, and to set apart young men for our service, and trees for our support. I have mentioned the Austrian. Ho sailed in one of two sister ships, which left the Clyde in coal; both rounded the Horn, and both, at several hundred miles of distance, though close on the same point of time, took fire at sea on the Pacific. One was destroyed; the derelict iron frame of the second, after long, aimless cruising, was at length recovered, refitted, and hails to day from San Francisco. A boat’s crew from one of these disasters reached, after great hardships, the Isle of Hiva.oa. Some of these men vowed they would never again confront the chances of the sea; but alone of them all the Austrian has been exactly true to his engage* ment, remains where ho landed, and designs to die where he has lived. Now, with such a man, falling and taking root among islanders, the processes described may be compared to a gardener’s graft. Ha passes bodily into the native stock, ceases wholly "to ho alien,—'has entered the commune of the blood, shares the prosperity and consideration of bis new family, and is expected to impart with the same generosity the fruits of bis European skill and knowledge. It is this implied engagement that so frequently offends the ingrafted white. To snatch an immediate advantage, to get, let us say, a station for his store—he will play upon the native custom, and become a eon or a brother for the day, premising himself to cast down the ladder by which he shall have ascended, and repudiate tho kinship 8} soon as it shall grow burdensome, and he finds there are two parties to the bargain. his Polynesian relative is simple, and conceived the blood bond literally j perhaps ho is shrewd, and himself entered the covenant with a view to gain j-and either way the store is ravaged, the house littered with lazy natives, and tho richer the man grows, the more numerous, tho more idle, bud the more affectionate he finds his native relatives. Moat men thus circumstanced contrive to buy or brutally manage to enforce their independence, but many vegetate without hope, strangled by parasites. . .

We had do cause to blush with Brother Michael. Our uew parents were kind, gentle, well mannered, and generous in gifts ; the wife was a most motherly woman, the husband a man who stood justly high with his emnloyera, Enough has been said to show why Moipu should be deposed ; and in Paaaena the French bad found a reputable substitute. Ho went always scrupulously dressed, and looked the picture of propriety, like a dark, handsome, stupid, and probably religious youug man hot from a European funeral. In character he seemed the ideal of what is known as the good citizen. He wore gravity like an ornament. None could more nicely represent the desired character as an appointed chief, the outpost of civilisation and reform. And yet, were the French to go and native mannero to revive, fancy beholds him crowned with old men’s beards and crowding with the first to a man-eating festival. But I must cot seem to be unjust to Paaaeua. His respectability went deeper than the skin; his sense of the becoming sometimes nerved him for unexpected rigours. One evening Captain Otis and Mr Osbourne were on shore in the village. All was agog, dancing had begun, it was plain it was to bo a night of festival, and our adventurers were overjoyed at their good fortune. A strong fall of rain drove them for shelter to the house of Paaaeua, where they were made welcome, wiled into a chamber, and shut in. Presently the rain took off, the fun was to begin in earnest, and the young bloods of Atuoua cams round the house and called to my follow travellers through the interstices of the wall. Late into the night the calls were continued and resumed, and sometimes mingled with taunts; late into the night the prisoners, tantalised by the noises of the festival, renewed their efforts to escape. But all was Tain ; right across the door lay that godfearing householder, Paaaeua, feigning sleep ; and my friends bad to forgo their junketing. In this incident, so delightfully European, we thought we oonld detect three strands of sentiment. In the first, place, Paaaeua had a charge of souls ; these were young men, and be judged it right to withhold them from the primrose path. Secondly, ho was a public character, and it was not fitting that his guests should countenance a festival of which he disapproved. So might some strict clergyman at home address a worldly visitor: * Go to the theatre it you like ; but, by your leave, not from my house!’ Thirdly Paaaeua was a man, jealous, and with some cause (as shall be shown) tor jealousy; and the toasters weie the satellites of hisimmediate rival Moipu. For the adoption had caused much excitement in the village. It made the strangers popular. Paaaeua, ia his difficult posture of appointed chief, drew strength and dignity from their alliance, and only Moipu and his followers were malcontent. For some reason nobody (except myself) appears to dislike Moipu. Captain Hart, who has been robbed and threatened by him; Father Orens, whom he has fired at, and repeatedly driven to the woods; my own family, and even the French officials—ail seemed smit with an irrepressible affection for the man. His foil had been made soft. His spn, upon his death, was to succeed Paaaeua in the chieftaincy, and he lived, at the time of our visit, in the shoreward part of the village in a good bouse, and with a strong following of young men, his late braves and pot hunters. In this society, the coming of the Casco, the adoption, the return feast on board, and the presents exchanged between the whiles and their new parents, were doubtless eagerly and bitterly canvassed. It was felt that a few years ago the honours would have gone elsewhere. In this unwanted business, in this reception of some hitherto undreamed-of and outlandiah potentate some Prestor John or old Arearachus —a few yeare back it would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would hare accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the

acknowledged leaders o£ society ; and now, by a malign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit in his house quite unobserved, and bis young men could but look in at the door the while their rivals feasted. Perhaps M. Qr(svy felt a touch of bitterness toward his successor when he beheld him figure on the broad stage of the centenary of eighty .nine. The visit of the Casco, which Moipu had missed by so few years, was a more unusual occasion in Atuona than a centenary in France, and the dethroned chief determined to reassert himself in the public eye. Mr Osbourne had gone into Atuona photographing ; the population of the village had gathered together for the occasion on the place before the church, and Paaaeua, highly ; delighted with this now appearance of his family, played the master of ceremonies, Xbe , church had been taken, with its jolly architect before the door, the nuns with their pupils, sundry damsels in the ancient and singularly uubecomiug robes of tapa, and Father Orens in the midst of a group of his parishioners.' X know not what else was in hand, when the photographer became aware of a sensation in tho,crowd, and, looking around, beheld a very nutilo figure of a man appear upon the margin of a thicket, and stroll nonchalantly near. The nonchalance was visibly affected ; it was plain he came there to arouse attention, and his success was instant. Ho was introduced. He was civil, ho was obliging, he was always ineffably superior and certain of himself, a well-graced actor. It was presently suggested that he should appear in his war costume. He gracefully consented, and returned in that strange, inappropriate, and ill-omened array (which very well became his handsome person) to strut in a circle of admirers and bo thenceforth the centre of photography. Thus had Moipu effected his introduction, as by acci dent to the white strangers, made it a favour to display his finery, and reduced his rival to a secondary role on the theatre of the disputed village. Paaaeua felt the blow, and with a spirit which we never dreamed ho could possess, asserted his priority. It was found impossible that day to get a photograph of Moipu alone, for whenever he stood up before the camera his successor placed himself unbidden by his side, and gently but firmly held to his position. The portraits of the pair, Jacob and Esau, standing shoulder to shoulder, one in bis careful European dress, one in his barbaric trapping?, figure the past and present of their island. A graveyard with its humble crosses would be the aptost symbol of the future. We were all impressed with the belief that Moipu had planned his campaign from the beginning to the end. It is certain that he lost no time in pushing his advantage. Mr Osbourne was inveigled to his house, various gifts were fished out of an old sea chest, Father Orens was called into service as interpreter, and Moipu formerly prepared to‘make brothers’ with Mata-Q-alahi-Grlass-Eyes—the net very euphonious name under which Mr Osbourne passed in the Marquesa. The feast of brotherhood took place on board tbo Casco. Paaaeua had arrived with his family, like a plain man, and his presents, which had been numerous, had followed one another at intervals through several days. Moipu, as if to mark at every point the opposition, came with a certain feudal pomp, attended by retainers bearing gifts of all discriptions, from plumes of old men’s beards to little, pious, Catholic engravings, I had met the man before this in the village, and detested him on sight. There was something undescribably raffish in his looks and ways that raised my gorge, and when man-eating was referred to, and he laughed a low, cruel laugh, part boastful, part bashful, like one reminded of some dashing peccadillo, my repugnance was mingled with nausea. This is no very human attitude, nor one at all becoming in a traveller; and, seen more privately, the man improved. Something negroid in character and face was still displeasing, but his ugly mouth became attractive when he smiled, his figure and bearing were certainly noble, and his eyes superb. In his appreciation of jams and pickles, in his delight in the reverberating mirrors of the dining cabin, and consequent endless repetition of Moipus andMatagalalis, he showed himself engagingly a child; and yet I am not sure. What seemed childishness may have been rather courtly art. His manners struck me as beyond the mark. They were reSned and caressing to the point of grossness, and when I think of the serene abaontraindedness with which he first strolled in upon our party, and then recall him running on hands and knees along the cabin so'as, pawing the velvet, dipping into the beds, and bleating commendatory * mitais * with exaggerated emphasis, like some enormous, over-mannered ape, I feel the more sure that both must have been calculated; and I sometimes wonder next if Moipu were quite alone in this polite duplicity, and ask myself whether the Casco were quite so much admired in the Marquesas as our visitors desired us to suppose. I will complete this sketch of an incurable cannibal grandee with two uncongruous traits. His favourite morsel was the human hand, of which he speaks to-day with an illfavoured lustfulnesa. And. when he said good-bye to Mrs Stevenson, holding her hand, viewing her with tearful eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation in the falsetto of Marquesan high society, ho wrote upon her mind a sentimental impression which I try in vain to share.