THE GATES OF THE MORNING
BOOK I
Chapter I-THE CANOE BUILDER
Dick remaining on an edge of coral cast his
eyes toward the South.
Behind him the breakers of the external ocean
roared and the spindrift
dissipated on the breeze; before him extended
a sea quiet as a lake,
endless, blue, and flown about by the fishing
gulls-the tidal pond of
Karolin.
Cut by its forty-mile ring of coral this incredible
lake was an ocean in
itself, an ocean of tempest in weighty breezes,
a pool of purplish blue, in light
airs-and it was his-he who had arrived here just
yesterday.
Ladies, kids, young people, all the clan to be
seen occupied along the
ocean side in the bursting sun, fishing with nets,
playing their games or
chipping away at the paraka patches, all were
his kin. His were the
kayaks drawn up on the sand and his the
unfilled houses where the conflict
kayaks had once laid on their rollers.
Then, at that point, as he cast his eyes from the
tidal pond to the kayak houses his
forehead contracted, and, turning his back to
the tidal pond he stood confronting
the breakers on the external ocean side and the
northern ocean. Away there,
past the ocean line, imperceptible, lay Palm
Tree, an island lovely
as a fantasy, yet amassing with demons.
Little Tari the son of Le Taioi the net maker,
sitting on the coral
close by, looked up at him. Tari knew little of
life, but he knew
that all the men of Karolin swept away by war
had left the women and
the boys and the children like himself
defenceless and without a man
or leader.
Then, yesterday, from the northern sea in a
strange boat and with
Katafa, the girl who had been blown to sea
years ago when out
fishing, this strange new figure had come, sent
by the gods, so the
women said, to be their chief and ruler.
The child knew nothing of whom the gods might
be nor did he care,
alone now with this wonderful new person, and
out of earshot of his
mother, he put the question direct with all the
simplicity of
childhood.
“Taori,” said little Tari, “who are you?” (_é
kamina tai_)
Could Dick have answered, would the child
have understood the
strange words of the strange story Dick might
have told him? “Tari,
I come of people beyond the world you know.
My name is Dick
Lestrange, and when I was smaller than you,
Tari, I was left alone
with an old sailor man on that island you call
Marua (Palm Tree),
which lies beyond sight fifty miles to the north.
There we lived and
there I grew to be a boy and Kearney, that was
his name, taught me
to fish and spear fish, and he made for me
things to play with,
little ships unlike the canoes of the islands. And
then, Tari, one
day long ago came Katafa, the girl who was
blown away from here in a
storm. She lived with us till Kearney died and
then we two were
alone. She taught me her language, which is
the language of Karolin.
She named me Taori; we loved one another
and might have lived
forever at Marua had not a great ship come
there filled with bad
men, men from the eastern islands of
Melanesia. They came to cut the
trees. Then they rose and killed the white men
with them and burned
the ship and in our boat we escaped from them,
taking with us
everything we loved, even the little ships, and
steering for
Karolin, we came, led by the lagoon light in the
sky.”
But he could not tell Tari this, or at least all of it,
for the very
name of Dick had passed from his memory, that
and the language he
had spoken as a child; Kearney, the sailor who
had brought him up,
was all but forgotten, all but lost sight of in the
luminous haze
that was his past.
The past, for men long shipwrecked and alone,
becomes blurred and
fogged, for Dick it began only with the coming
of Katafa to Marua,
behind and beyond that all was forgotten as
though consumed in the
great blaze of tropic light that bathed the island
and the sea, the
storms that swept the coconut groves, the mists
of the rainy
seasons. Kearney would have been quite
forgotten but for the little
ships he had made as playthings for the boy—
who was now a man.
He looked down at the questioning child. “I am
Taori, Tari tatu, why
do you ask?”
“I do not know,” said the child. “I ask as I
breathe but no big
folk—madyana—will ever answer the questions
of Tari— Ai, the fish!”
His facile mind had already dropped the
subject, attracted by the
cries of some children, hauling in a net, and he
rose and trotted
away.
Dick turned his gaze again to the north. The
question of the child
had stirred his mind and he saw again the
schooner that had put in
to Palm Tree only to be burned by the
Melanesian hands, he saw again
Katafa and himself as they made their escape
in the old dinghy that
Kearney had taught him to handle as a boy. He
saw their landing on
this beach, yesterday, and the women and
children swarming round
him, he the man whom they considered sent by
the gods to be their
chief and leader.
Then as he gazed towards the north the
memory of the men from whom
he had escaped with the girl stained the beauty
of sea and sky.
There was no immediate fear of the men who
had taken possession of
Palm Tree; the men of Palm Tree had no
canoes, but they would build
canoes—surely they would build canoes, and
as surely they would see
the far mirror blaze of Karolin lagoon in the sky,
just as he had
seen it, and they would come. It might be a very
long time yet, but
they would come.
Dick was an all but blook, a kanaka, a savage,
and yet the white man
was there. He could think forward, he could
think round a subject
and he could imagine.
That was why he had sent a canoe that
morning across to the southern
beach to fetch Aioma, Palia and Tafata, three
old men, too old for
war, but expert canoe-builders, that was why
when gazing at the
tribe in full congregation, his eyes had
brightened to the fact that
nearly a hundred of the youths were ripening to
war age, but under
all, lighting and animating his mind, raising
daring to eagle
heights, lay his passion for Katafa, his other self
more dear to him
than self, threatened, ever so vaguely, yet still
threatened.
War canoes! Did he intend fighting any invaders
in the lagoon or as
they drew towards shore, or did he vaguely
intend to be the
attacker, destroying the danger at its source
before it could
develop? Who knows?
* * * * *
A hand fell upon his shoulder and turning, he
found himself face to
face with Katafa, a lock of her dark hair
escaped from the thread of
elastic vine that bound it, blew right back on the
breeze like an
eagle’s feather, and her eyes, luminous and
dark instead of meeting
his, were fixed towards the point where he had
been gazing—the
due-north sea line.
“Look!” said Katafa.
At big intervals and in certain conditions of
weather Palm Tree,
though far behind the sea line, became visible
from Karolin through
mirage. Last evening they had seen it and now
again it was beginning
to live, to bloom, to come to life, a mysterious
stain low down in
the southern sky, a dull spot in the sea dazzle,
that deepened by
degrees and hardened till as if sketched in by
some unseen painter,
the island showed beautiful as a dream,
diaphanous, yet vivid.
With her hand upon his shoulder they stood
without speaking, their
minds untutored, knowing nothing of mirage,
their eyes fixed on the
place from which they had escaped and which
was rising now so
strangely beyond the far sea line as if to gaze at
them.
They saw again the horde of savages on the
beach, figures monstrous
as the forms in a nightmare, they felt again the
wind that filled
the sail as the dinghy raced for safety and the
open sea, and again
they heard the yells of the Melanesians mad
with rum stolen from the
schooner they had brought in, and which they
had burnt. And there,
there before them lay the scene of the Tragedy,
that lovely picture
which showed nothing of the demons that still
inhabited it.
Then as Dick gazed on this loveliness, which
was yet a threat and a
warning, his nostrils expanded and his eyes
grew dark with hate.
They had threatened him—that was nothing,
they had threatened
Katafa, that was everything—and they still
threatened her.
Some day they would come. The vision of Palm
Tree seemed to repeat
what instinct told him. They would build canoes
and seeing the
lagoon mirror-light in the sky, they would come.
They had no women,
those men, and here were women, and instinct
half whispered to him
that just as he had been drawn to Katafa, so
would these men be
drawn to the women of Karolin. They would
scan the horizon in search
of some island whose tribe might be raided of
its women and seeing
the lagoon light they would come.
Ah, if he had known, danger lay not only to the
north, but wherever
greed or desire or hatred might roam on that
azure sea, not only
amongst savages, but the wolves of civilization.
To Dick there was no world beyond the world of
water that ringed the
two islands; no Europe, no America, no history
but the history of
his short life as the life of Katafa, and yet even
in that life,
short as it was, he had learned to dread men
and he had envisaged
the foundation of all history—man’s instinct for
war, rapine and
destruction.
Then gradually the vision of Palm Tree began
to fade and pass,
suddenly it vanished like a light blown out and
as they turned from
the sea to the lagoon, Katafa pointed across the
lagoon water to a
canoe approaching from the southern beach.
It was the canoe Dick has sent for the canoe
builders and, leaving
the coral, they came down to the white sand of
the inner beach to
meet it.
CHAPTER II—THE REVOLT OF
THE OLD MEN
Two women were in it, and as they drove it
ashore beaching it with
the outrigger a-tilt, Dick, followed by Katafa,
approached, and
resting his hand on the mast stays attached to
the outrigger
gratings, he turned to the women, who,
springing out, stood, paddles
in hand, looking from him to Katafa.
“And the builders?” asked he, “where are they?”
The shorter woman clucked her tongue and
turned her face away
towards the lagoon, the taller one looked Dick
straight in the face.
“They will not come,” said she. “They say Uta
Matu alone was their
king and he is dead, also they say they are too
old. ‘A mataya
ayana’—they are feeble and near past the
fishing, even in the quiet
water.”
The shorter woman choked as if over a laugh,
then she turned
straight to Dick.
“They will not come, Taori, all else is talk.”
She was right. The express order had gone to
them to cross over and
they refused; they would not acknowledge the
newcomer as their
chief, all else was talk.
Several villagers, seeing the canoe beaching,
had run up and were
listening, more were coming along. Already the
subject was under
whispered discussion amongst the group by the
canoe, whilst Dick,
his foot resting on the slightly tilted outrigger,
stood, his eyes
fixed on the sennit binding of the outrigger pole
as if studying it
profoundly.
The blaze of anger that had come into his eyes
on hearing the news
had passed; anger had given place to thought.
This was no ordinary business. Dick had never
heard the word
“revolt,” nor the word “authority,” but he could
think quite well
without them. The only men who could direct
the building of the big
war canoes refused to work, and from the tone
and looks of the women
who brought the message, he saw quite clearly
that if something were
not done to bring the canoe-builders to heel, his
power to make the
natives do things would be gone.
Dick never wasted much time in thought. He
turned from the canoe,
raced up to the house where the little ships
were carefully stored
and came racing back with a fish spear.
Then, calling to the women, he helped to run
the canoe out, sprang
on board and helped to raise the mat sail to the
wind coming in from
the break.
“I will soon return,” he cried to Katafa, his voice
borne across the
sparkling water on a slant of the wind; then the
women crouched down
to ballast the canoe, and with the steering
paddle in his hand he
steered.
The canoe that had brought Katafa drifting to
Palm Tree years ago
had been the first South Sea island craft that
the boy had seen. The
fascination of it had remained with him. This
canoe was bigger,
broader of beam and the long skate-shaped
piece of wood that formed
the outrigger was connected with it not by
outrigger poles but by a
bridge.
Dick, as he steered, took in every little detail,
the rattans of the
grating, the way the mast stays were fixed to
the grating and how
the mast itself was stepped, the outrigger and
the curve of its
ends, the mat sail and the way it was fastened
to the yard.
Though he had never steered a canoe before,
the sea-craft inborn in
him carried him through, and the women
crouching and watching and
noting every detail saw nothing indicative of
indecision.
Now there are two ways in which one may
upset a canoe of this sort
by bad handling, one is to let the outrigger
leave the water and
tilt too high in the air, the other is to let the
outrigger dip too
deep in the water.
Dick seemed to know, and as they crossed the
big lift of sea coming
in with the flood from the break, he avoided
both dangers.
The beach where the remnants of the southern
tribe lived, was
exactly opposite to the beach of the northern
tribe, and as both
beaches were close to the break in the reef, the
distance from one
to the other was little over a mile. Then as they
drew close, Dick
could see more distinctly the few remaining
huts under the shelter
of a grove of Jack-fruit trees; beyond the Jackfruit stood pandanus
palms bending lagoonward, and three tall
coconut palms sharp against
the white up-flaring horizon.
As the canoe beached, Dick saw the rebels.
They were seated on the
sand close to the most easterly of the huts,
seated in the shadow of
the Jack-fruit leaves; three old men seated, two
with their knees up
and one tailor fashion, whilst close to them by
the edge of a little
pool lay a girl.
As Dick drew near followed by the taller of the
boat women, the
girl, who had been gazing into the waters of the
pool, looked up.
She was Le Moan, granddaughter of Le Juan,
the witch woman of
Karolin now dead and gone to meet judgment
for the destruction she
had caused. Le Moan was only fourteen. She
had heard of the coming
of the new ruler to Karolin and of his bringing
with him Katafa, the
girl long thought to be dead. She had heard the
order given to her
grandfather Aioma that morning to come at
once to the northern beach
as the new chief required canoes to be built,
and she had heard the
old man’s refusal. Le Moan had wondered what
this new chief might be
like. The monstrous great figure of Uta Matu,
last king of Karolin,
had come up in memory at the word “chief,” and
now, as the canoe was
hauled up and the women cried out “He
comes,” she saw Dick.
Dick with the sun on his face and on his redgold hair, Dick naked
and honey-coloured, lithe as a panther and
straight as a stabbing
spear. Dick with his eyes fixed on the three old
men of Karolin who
had turned their heads to gaze on Dick.
Le Moan drew in her breath, then she seemed
to cease breathing as
the vision approached, passed her without a
word and stood facing
Aioma, the eldest and the greatest of the
canoe-builders.
Le Moan was only fourteen, yet she was tall
almost as Katafa, she
was not a true Polynesian; though her mother
had been a native of
Karolin, her father, a sailor from a Spanish ship
destroyed years
ago by Uta Matu, had given the girl European
characteristics so
strong that she stood apart from the other
islanders as a pine might
stand amongst palm trees.
She was beautiful, with a dark beauty just
beginning to unfold from
the bud and she was strange as the sea depths
themselves. Sometimes
seated alone beneath the towering Jack-fruits
her head would poise
as though she were listening, as though some
voice were calling
through the sound of the surf on the reef, some
voice whose words
she could not quite catch; and sometimes she
would sit above the
reef pools gazing deep down into the water, the
crystal water where
coralline growths bloomed and fish swam, but
where she seemed to see
more things than fish.
The sharp mixture of two utterly alien races
sometimes produces
strange results—it was almost at times as if Le
Moan were confused
by voices or visions from lands of ancestry
worlds apart.
She would go with Aioma fishing, and with her
on board, Aioma never
dreaded losing sight of land, for Le Moan was a
pathfinder.
Blindfold her on the coral and she would yet
find her way on foot,
take her beyond the sea-line and she would
return like a homing
pigeon. Like the pigeon she had the compass in
her brain.
This was the only gift she had received from her
mother, La
Jennabon, who had received it from seafaring
ancestors of the remote
past.
Crouching by the well she saw now Dick
standing before Aioma and she
heard his voice.
“You are Aioma?” said Dick, who had singled
the chief of the three
out by instinct.
The three old men rose to their feet. The sight
of the newcomer
helped, but it was the singling out of Aioma with
such success by
one who had never seen him that produced the
effect. Surely here was
a chief.
“I am Aioma,” replied the other. “What want you
with me?”
“That which the woman had already told you,”
replied Dick, who hated
waste of words or repeating himself.
“They told me of the new chief who had come
to the northern beach—_e
uma kaio tau_, and of how he had ordered
canoes to be built,” said
Aioma, “and I said, ‘I am too old, and Uta is
dead, and I know no
chief but Uta; also in the last war on that Island
in the north all
the men of Karolin fell and they have never
returned, they nor their
canoes.’ So what is the use of building more
canoes when there are
no men to fill them?”
“The men are growing,” said Dick.
“Ay, they are growing,” grumbled Aioma, “but it
will be many moons
before they are ready to take the paddle and
the spear—and even so,
where is the enemy? The sea is clear.”
“Aioma,” said Dick, “I have come from there,”
pointing to the north;
“the sea is not clear.”
“You have come from Marua (Palm Tree)?”
“I have come from Marua, where one day
Katafa came, drifted from
here in her canoe; there we lived till a little while
ago when men
landed, killing and breaking and burning—
burning even the big canoe
they had come in. Then Katafa and I set sail for
Karolin, for
Karolin called me to rule her people.”
“And the men who landed to kill and burn?”
asked Aioma.
“They are still on Marua; they have no canoes
but they will build
them, and surely they will come.”
Neither of Aioma’s companions said a word
whilst Aioma stood looking
at the ground as if consulting it, then his eyes
rose to Dick’s
face. Age and war had made Aioma wise, he
knew men and he knew Truth
when he saw her.
“I will do your bidding, Taori,” said he quite
simply, then he
turned to the others, spoke some words to
them, giving directions
what to do till his return, and led the way to the
canoe.
Le Moan, still crouching by the well, said
nothing. Her eyes were
fixed on Dick, this creature so new, so different
from any one she
had ever seen. Perhaps the race spirit was
telling her that here was
a being of her father’s race miraculously come
to Karolin, perhaps
she was held simply by the grace and youth of
the newcomer—who
knows?
Dick, as he turned, noticed her fully for the first
time and as
their eyes met, he paused, held by her gaze
and the strangeness of
her appearance, so different from that of the
other natives. For a
moment his mind seemed trapped, then as his
eyes fell he passed on
and taking the steering paddle pushed off, the
wind from the
reef-break filling the sail of the canoe.
Le Moan, rising and shading her eyes, stood
watching as the sail
grew less across the sparkling water, watching
as the canoe rose and
fell on the swell setting in from the break,
watching as it reached
the far white line of the northern beach where
Katafa was waiting
for the return of her lover.
CHAPTER III—THE LITTLE SHIPS
The crude kayak of the Pacific is a burrow the
storage compartment of a tree
emptied and molded into the type of a boat, so
thin in extent
to its length as to be totally unsound however
for the outrigger.
The outrigger, a long skate-molded piece of
wood fixed to
port-consistently to port-by shafts on a focal
scaffold, is a conciliatory sentiment to
the ocean for need of bar, and the ocean
acknowledges it-on conditions. However
for the outrigger, no kayak of any size would
dare the ocean, yet for
it the islands would have been fixed as between
themselves, war
made inconceivable, and the float of individuals
among island and island
also among island and mainland.
Far away in the remote past some man once
stood, the dad of thisdaring invention; little
dreaming of the vast consequences of the
work to which he had put his hand.
Dick at the steering paddle saw a figure on the
northern beach as
they drew near. It was Katafa, waiting for him,
the wind blowing her
girdle of dracæna leaves and her hand
sheltering her eyes against
the sun. Standing just as Le Moan was standing
on the southern beach
sheltering her eyes and watching the canoe that
carried the first
man who had ever made her turn her head.
Some children were playing near Katafa and a
fishing canoe was
putting out near by, but he saw only Katafa.
“Katafa,” said Aioma, who was crouched by the
after outrigger pole.
“It is she sure enough, and they said she was
dead and that her
ghost had returned bringing you with her, Taori,
but the dead do not
return. Katafa, she was the girl under the taboo
of Taminan, the
girl no man or woman might touch, and then
one day she went fishing
beyond the reef and a storm took her and she
was drowned, so they
said.”
“She was not drowned,” replied Dick. “The wind
blew her to Marua
where I was—I and another whose face I have
near forgotten, Kearney,
he was called, and he made canoes but not like
these, then one day
he went among the trees and did not return.
Then the god Nan came to
the island and after him the men of Karolin who
fought together so
that all were killed, and then came the bad men
as I have told you
and would have killed us but we left Marua in
the night.... Look,
there is the canoe we came in.” He pointed to
the dinghy hauled up
on the beach.
“O he! Taori!” It was Katafa’s voice hailing them
from the shore,
glad, sweet, clear as a bell, yet far-carrying as
the voice of a
gull.
As Dick sprang out on the sands he seized her
in his arms; parted
only a few hours, it seemed to them that they
had been weeks apart.
In the old days, even before he was born, his
mother Emmeline had
never been at ease when separated from his
father even by the
breadth of the lagoon, the demon that hints of
mischance seemed
always at her ear.
Dick seemed to have inherited with his power of
love for Katafa,
something of the dread of mischance for the
beloved.
He embraced her, heedless of onlookers,
though the only eyes to see
were the eyes of the children and of Aioma who
had eyes for nothing
but the dinghy.
As soon as his foot touched sand, the canoebuilder made for it
running like a boy, clapped his hand on the
gunnel and then ran it
over the planking.
The boats of the Spanish ship of long ago had
been clinker-built and
had been destroyed in the fight, but he had
seen bits of them washed
ashore on the southern beach. The dinghy was
carvel-built and
entire, a perfect specimen of eastern boatbuilding over which the
canoe designer brooded forgetful of Dick and
Katafa, the beach he
stood on and the sun that lit it.
The idea of a boat built of planking and not
hollowed out of a tree
trunk had been presented to him by the charred
and shattered
fragments of the Spanish boats, but how to get
planking and how to
bend it to the form he desired was beyond his
imagination and beyond
his means. He saw vaguely that these boats of
the papalagi were made
somewhat after the fashion of a man, with a
backbone and ribs and a
covering for the ribs, he saw that by this means
enough beam could
be obtained to enable the builder to dispense
with the outrigger—but
then speed, where was there sign of speed in
this thing squat and
ugly?
In the early ages of the world in which Aioma
still dwelt, ugliness
had only two expressions, the lines that
indicated want of speed and
the lines that indicated want of strength.
Dick, though brown as the canoe-builder and
almost to be mistaken
for a true islander, was perhaps a million years
younger than Aioma,
just as the dinghy was a million years younger
than the fishing
canoe that had just brought him across the
lagoon. In Dick, Aioma
saw the lines that indicated speed and strength,
nothing more—he was
blind to the nobility of type expressed by that
daring face, to the
far sight of the eyes and the breadth of the
brow; in the dinghy
Aioma saw want of speed—he was blind to the
nobility of type that
made this bud the sister of a battleship, made it
a vertebrate as
against the dugout which has neither keel nor
ribs.
Then Aioma, standing in the sun, a plain canoebuilder and workman
in the sight of God and a critic as every true
workman is, began to
deride the dinghy, at first with chuckles deep
down in his throat,
then with a sound like the clacking of a hen,
then with laughter
long and loud and words of derision.
“Which end is which of this pig fish?” inquired
Aioma of heaven and
Dick, “and he who made her, how many more
did he make like her?”
Dick, who had always connected the dinghy
with Kearney, and who had
a sort of faith that Kearney had made her just
as he had made the
little model ships, winced at the laughter of the
old man. Perhaps
it was the white man in him revolting at the
derision of a savage
over the works of the white man. However that
may be, he turned and
ran up the beach to the house of Uta Matu
which he and Katafa had
made their own. There in the shadow, on a
hastily constructed shelf
stood the little model ships he had so carefully
salved from Palm
Tree: the frigate, the schooner, the full-rigged
ship and the whale
man, the last thread connecting him with
civilization; toys of the
long ago, but no longer toys—fetiches from a
world whose very
language he had lost, a world of sun and tall
trees where like a
ghost in the sun dazzle moved a memory that
was once a man—Kearney.
He took the schooner from its rest and coming
out with it, ran to a
great pool in the coral, calling Aioma to come
and see what he who
made the dinghy had also made.
The pool thirty feet long by twenty broad was
ruffled by the breeze
from the sea, it was clear as crystal, coral
floored—and a trapped
school of tiny fish no larger than needles,
passed like a silver
cloud here and there. Dick on his knees
launched the schooner and
Aioma standing bent with a hand on each knee
watched her as she
floated on an even keel. Then on the merry
west wind with helm
properly set and main boom guyed out she
went sailing down the pool
to the east where Katafa had run to receive her.
Aioma watched, then Dick running to the other
end showed him how she
could sail almost against the wind. Dick knew
every stick and string
of her, how to hoist and lower main and fore
and how to set the head
sails,—had you placed him on a real schooner,
he could have worked
her from his knowledge of the model, and
Aioma watched vastly
intrigued; then, taking a hand, he got on his
knees and the great
sun saw the builders of the future fleet of
Karolin playing like
children, whilst the little schooner on its
imitation sea sailed
from port to port, bowing to the ripples of the
pool as the lost
_Raratonga_, of which it was the model, had
bowed to the swell of
the great Pacific.
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