In the South Seas

elsewhere. We had scarce a word in common; but her whole lean body spoke for her with indignant eloquence. “My chest!” it cried, with a stress on the possessive. “My chest – broken open! This is a fi ne state of things!” I hastened to lay the blame where it belonged – on François and his wife – and found I had made things worse instead of better. She repeated the names at fi rst with incredulity, then with despair. A while she seemed stunned, next fell to disembowelling the box, pil­ing the goods on the fl oor, and visibly computing the extent of François’s ravages; and presently after she was observed in high speech with Taniera, who seemed to hang an ear like one reproved.

his backward brother. But, except in these, to-day the peril is a memory. When our generation were yet in the cradle and playroom it was still a living fact. Between 1830 and 1840, Hao, for instance, was a place of the most dangerous approach, where ships were seized and crews kidnapped. As late as 1856, the schooner Sarah Ann sailed from Papeete and was seen no more. She had women on board, and children, the captain’s wife, a nursemaid, a baby, and the two young sons of a Captain Steven on their way to the mainland for schooling. All were supposed to have perished in a squall. A year later, the cap­tain of the Julia, coasting along the island variously called Bligh, Lagoon, and Tematangi saw armed natives follow the course of his schooner, clad in many-coloured stuffs. Suspicion was at once aroused; the mother of the lost children was profuse of money; and one expedition having found the place deserted, and returned content with fi ring a few shots, she raised and herself accompanied another. None appeared to greet or to op­pose them; they roamed a while among abandoned huts and empty thickets; then formed two parties and set forth to beat, from end to end, the pandanus jungle of the island. One man remained alone by the landing-place – Teina, a chief of Anaa, leader of the armed natives who made the strength of the ex­pedition. Now that his comrades were departed this way and that, on their laborious exploration, the silence fell profound; and this silence was the ruin of the islanders. A sound of stones rattling caught the ear of Teina. He looked, thinking to per­ceive a crab, and saw instead the brown hand of a human being issue from a fi ssure in the ground. A shout recalled the search parties and announced their doom to the buried caitiffs. In

We all know what Catholics are, whether in the Paumotus or at home. But the Paumotuan Mormon seemed a phenom­enon apart. He marries but the one wife, uses the Protestant Bible, observes Protestant forms of worship, forbids the use of liquor and tobacco, practises adult baptism by immersion, and after every public sin, rechristens the backslider. I advised with Mahinui, whom I found well informed in the history of the American Mormons, and he declared against the least con­nection. “Pour moi,” said he, with a fi ne charity, “les Mormons ici un petit Catholiques.” Some months later I had an oppor­tunity to consult an orthodox fellow-countryman, an old dis­senting Highlander, long settled in Tahiti, but still breath­ing of the heather of Tiree. “Why do they call themselves Mormons?” I asked. “My dear, and that is my question!” he exclaimed. “For by all that I can hear of their doctrine, I have nothing to say against it, and their life, it is above reproach.” And for all that, Mormons they are, but of the earlier sowing: the so-called Josephites, the followers of Joseph Smith, the op­ponents of Brigham Young.