第38章 THE STORY OF A PLANTATION(3)

Pigs were cooking.Well-oiled braves,with well-oiled muskets,strutted on the paepae or sat down to feast.No business,however needful,could be done,and all thoughts were supposed to be centred in this mockery of war.A few days later,by a regrettable accident,a man was killed;it was felt at once the thing had gone too far,and the quarrel was instantly patched up.But the more serious wars were prosecuted in a similar spirit;a gift of pigs and a feast made their inevitable end;the killing of a single man was a great victory,and the murder of defenceless solitaries counted a heroic deed.

The foot of the cliffs,about all these islands,is the place of fishing.Between Taahauku and Atuona we saw men,but chiefly women,some nearly naked,some in thin white or crimson dresses,perched in little surf-beat promontories -the brown precipice overhanging them,and the convolvulus overhanging that,as if to cut them off the more completely from assistance.There they would angle much of the morning;and as fast as they caught any fish,eat them,raw and living,where they stood.It was such helpless ones that the warriors from the opposite island of Tauata slew,and carried home and ate,and were thereupon accounted mighty men of valour.Of one such exploit I can give the account of an eye-witness.'Portuguese Joe,'Mr.Keane's cook,was once pulling an oar in an Atuona boat,when they spied a stranger in a canoe with some fish and a piece of tapu.The Atuona men cried upon him to draw near and have a smoke.He complied,because,I suppose,he had no choice;but he knew,poor devil,what he was coming to,and (as Joe said)'he didn't seem to care about the smoke.'A few questions followed,as to where he came from,and what was his business.These he must needs answer,as he must needs draw at the unwelcome pipe,his heart the while drying in his bosom.And then,of a sudden,a big fellow in Joe's boat leaned over,plucked the stranger from his canoe,struck him with a knife in the neck -inward and downward,as Joe showed in pantomime more expressive than his words -and held him under water,like a fowl,until his struggles ceased.Whereupon the long-pig was hauled on board,the boat's head turned about for Atuona,and these Marquesan braves pulled home rejoicing.Moipu was on the beach and rejoiced with them on their arrival.Poor Joe toiled at his oar that day with a white face,yet he had no fear for himself.'They were very good to me -gave me plenty grub:never wished to eat white man,'said he.