Part 16

“Over there, in the hollowed-out heart of the palm trees we save water. When it rains, water goes inside the palm trunk. Save it for dry months.”

He pulled some green leaves away from a row of chopped off banana palm trunks, and there, inside of each, were trunkfuls of cool fresh water. I tasted it, and it had the tang of palm pitch in it, which made it the more refreshing. Carefully, using coconuts and tortoise-shells for dippers, he helped us fill the two barrels.

“Tonight when moon comes up full, dance of Virgins in the village. You stay and see all by my side. Your friends (meaning the sailors) they stay too and see Virgin dance.”

“Virgins? Sure I’ll stay,” piped up Bulgar.

“What is the Dance of the Virgins?” I asked.

“Every year young girl ready to marry. Must choose mate at Virgin Dance. Then become good wife because she pick husband alone.”

I was so anxious to stay and see the dance that I forgot all about returning to the ship. I asked Swede, as he was the oldest sailor and therefore had the most authority over the others, if he wanted to stay.

“Hell yes, Skipper, any time any virgins dance that’s where you’ll find me.” As long as he had expressed a willingness to stay also I saw no occasion to hurry back aboard ship, so we followed the Chief to the village. The sun had set, and the moon was just beginning to dip out of the horizon. I sat at the Chief’s feet, and the men stood behind him and watched the festival begin.

Once a year it is the custom in Atafu to have a marrying festival, which is celebrated by the Dance of the Virgins. An Atafu girl is ready to marry when she is ten or eleven years old, and she alone has the choice of her husband. No man can woo her until she has given him the sign that she has chosen him. The marriage festival is the biggest event of the year. The little girls shine their gold brown bodies with coconut oils. Instead of preparing lavish wardrobes they make their skins shine like burnished gold. Over their left ear, snugly tucked in their thick hair to assure its not falling out during the dance, is a white lotus or hibiscus flower. The white hibiscus is a flower sacred to virgins, and when they place one on the left ear it is the sign that they are ready to take a mate.

The moon rising on the set day of the festival is the signal for the dance to begin. All the young men who are going to take a wife, or rather who desire a wife, line up on the left side of the Chief, and stand with folded arms and watch the dance. The folded arms are a sign of “must not touch, but only look” until the dance is over. Slowly and almost inaudibly at first, then gradually becoming louder and more wild and barbaric, it burst into a thrilling savage rhythm. The tom-tom is the tribe’s only musical instrument. They have never heard of the ukulele or guitar. I have found out since that the ukulele was introduced into the Hawaiian Islands by a boy from Harvard!

As the beating of the tom-toms swelled, the virgins, nine in all, started their dance—there in our presence they unfolded the sacred rite of virginity crying for a mate. Every movement of their muscles has a meaning, and it is foreign to the meaning that the civilized world has put upon it. The Chief, on seeing the sailors’ spellbound gaze, said:

“On your far-away island United States men pay women many gifts to make bad our dance.” I hotly denied that accusation. The hula-hula, which is always associated with the South Seas, is a cheap imitation of the real thing, but at that time I had never heard of it.

The writhing of their abdomens was symbolic of calling upon the fires of the earth to burn their wombs clean for the coming of a manchild to make their tribe strong. Their waving arms called on the sea to bring them ships loaded with treasure, and on the winds to bring long life to their body, so that their loved one would enjoy them long. As the music swelled their dance became more uncontrolled; they seemed to be spirits inside of native bodies trying to express a hunger for mating.

Suddenly the music stopped, the girls threw themselves on the ground singing a triumphant song, but the left hand of each was cupped over the lotus flower to keep it from the ground.

Rara-mongai rose from his throne and walked to the middle of the clearing where the girls lay. A hush fell, as he solemnly spoke:

“To you who are looking for a wife, I speak. The strongest men alone can have maidens. Here in moonlight on festival night, each man step forward and show what strength of body he has that the maidens may choose the greatest of you.”

A native man’s way of wooing is to show off in front of his bride to be, physically. He tries to outdo his rivals by excelling in physical strength, such as husking a coconut with his teeth, stabbing a wild boar, diving and killing a shark single-handed. Instead of protesting their love in so many words they believe in action, and by displaying physical supremacy, they think to impress the women that they are the masters. At the Chief’s words about twenty young natives stepped forward eagerly. The truck driver and Swede made a dive for the center of the clearing too.

“Say, Chief,” spoke up Swede, “I’m stronger than any of these young pups, and I’ll take that little girl with the nice fat figger.” Swede was so pleased with himself that he didn’t notice the anger in Rara-mongai’s face. He spoke harshly in his dialect:

“Maidens choose husband. No white man touch my people.”

To Swede, the dance had just been a good show, and sailor-fashion he was entering into the spirit of it, not realizing he was violating the most sacred rite of Atafu.

By intervening I gained the favor of the Chief once more. The girl that Swede had pointed out never took her eyes off him during the rest of the ceremony. A white man wanted her, and she wouldn’t make any effort to attract her own native kind. Any white man in the South Seas who is healthy looking and strong, can win a native woman away from any native or chief.

For two hours while the rest of the villagers feasted, the native men wooed the virgins by showing off athletically. Not one word is spoken, the whole story of their desire is in pantomime. When the moon reached the center of the sky, the Chief called for silence. According to the custom of the tribe he told the girls that now they must choose a man, by taking the lotus from their left ear and placing it on the right ear of the chosen one. I looked at the faces of the twenty young men who stood in a row hoping to be selected. As the girls walked up slowly with the lotus blossoms in their outstretched hands toward them, fear and triumph flashed down the line. Three girls went to one young buck and gave him their lotus, another man received two flowers, and the others one. Those that were passed up by the girls once more folded their arms in to their bodies.

“Huh,” grunted Swede contemptuously, in my ear, “if those birds just fold their arms and lay down on the job no wonder the janes didn’t pick ’em.”

The Chief walked to the three girls who had picked one man, and did a Solomon. He handed the man to the girl who had reached him first. Primitive law, administered swiftly and without question. A couple stood before the Chief. With his tortoise-shell emblem of state he touched the girl and the man on the head, the native sign of wedlock. To the woman he said:

“By choosing this man you now become nothing. He is the stronger. If any man touch you after this wedlock the man shall be punished, for you have no right or privilege to say what shall be done with your body. If your husband gives privilege of your body to man he must be paid for it. If man take you without your husband’s willingness, that man shall be sent to the coral reef to scrape the salt that dries there from the surf. There he shall stay until he is again like a child (until madness seizes him) and then he shall fall in the sea.”

The native man turned to the girl, she lifted her bare shoulder to his lips, and he bit her until her blood came. The Chief went on:

“Woman’s blood in husband’s body make you one always.”

Then to the man, the Chief admonished: “Every girl come now and touch her body to your body. If you do not desire them when they touch you, your choice of wife is good. You have woman good for you.”

He beckoned to a group of the youngest and prettiest girls in the village. One by one they sidled up to the groom and in the most alluring and sensuous manner, they let their bodies caress his. The groom stood with his eyes averted, unmoved. It was a triumph over temptation, and that was the signal for the tom-toms to burst into an exotic rhythm, as the married pair walked hand in hand down to the lagoon. There is a tribal custom on Atafu that every newly married couple walk hand in hand up to their necks in the waters of the lagoon, they cleanse themselves together, and when they have done that, their marriage is consummated before the eyes of all.

When the last couple was married, the festival was over, and dancing, singing and feasting lasted long into the night. I had forgotten all about time, the water barrels and Father’s order to come right back to the ship. By the position of the moon I guessed it was about four a.m. A frightened cry from a native running up from the beach broke in on the revelry. Wildly he pointed to the ship off shore. The truck driver who never had much to say at any time laconically observed:

“The Old Man’s sending up flares from the vessel. Guess he thinks a cannibal swallowed you whole.”

I was in for it and I knew it. I could feel my hind part tingling in anticipation of what was going to happen when Father got his hands on me.

“Let’s beat it back to the ship, Swede. There won’t be a barnacle left on my bottom when Father catches me.”

“Yeh? Well, what’s your hurry, how you going to get the water barrels back?”

I knew I’d catch hell for staying ashore, but to come back minus a life boat and no fresh water was suicide.

“Say, Chief, will you lend me an outrigger and a couple of men to bring it back, so I can get back to the ship?”

The Chief smiled, and said:

“White girl always ora-aii on Atafu. I help you go, but sorry. Some day come back again?”

I would have promised that Chief anything just to get off the island. He gave us an outrigger and we shoved out for the schooner. I saw the red distress flares from the ship light up the sky—Father was in earnest, and the moon was so bright I could plainly see the hull of the ship from the beach. Without much difficulty we got beyond the surf and were soon alongside. I let the sailors go aboard first. They threw over a bowline and hauled the water kegs on deck. Father was at the Jacob’s ladder leaning over the side, smoking his pipe. The smoke was coming out of it in fast jerks, and I needed no barometer to tell me a storm was coming.

Leisurely I climbed the rope ladder, for I was in no hurry to get aboard. Halfway up Father called:

“Where in hell is the dinghy?”

“I was going to explain to you about that, Father. We were trying to ride the surf and we capsized and. . . .”

I got no further. Father had me by the neck and seat of the pants, hurrying me up to the poop.

“I can understand these so and so landlubbers upsettin’ a boat, but you’re my daughter and I won’t believe any yarn like you losin’ control of a dinghy.”

Along about dawn I was comfortable enough to sit down without too great pain! We were sailing along under full canvas, and Father, evidently content that I could get into no further deviltry, had turned in for a nap.

Swede and the sailors were sitting on the hatch near the mizzen mast. From my place at the wheel I heard Swede saying:

“Yeh, I coulda had any one of those dames, they was crazy about me; that fat little nigger wench is just busted-hearted to see me leave.”

And it was me that got a licking!

I was never to forget that experience on Atafu. I thought that everybody in the world was married according to native custom. I thought that some day I, too, would be taken to a dance where I could pick out my mate.

The days that followed our departure from Atafu became dull and monotonous. The sound of the tom-toms and the vision of the native girls abandoning themselves in a dance, was constantly before me. I hadn’t even had a licking for almost a week and the calm atmosphere was too much for me. I would have to start something if nothing was going to happen of its own accord. I started a cockroach war. I caught two big cockroaches and tied their bodies together with pieces of thread. Then I went around to the sailors and took bets on them. I drew a line on the deck and put a roach on either side of it. The one that pulled the other over the line won. I bet two plugs of tobacco and one of Father’s undershirts on the fattest cockroach, but the ship took a list to leeward just as he started to pull hard, and the other cockroach won and I lost. In novels of the sea the Captain’s daughter is frequently pictured as occupying herself with lovely feminine pastimes, but cockroaches, rats, or bedbug hunts were more fascinating to me. But even in the trade winds those games tired me. I wanted action.

One afternoon, finding nothing more exciting to do, and when I was sure Father was asleep, I started on my own Dance of the Virgins. I didn’t have anything I could use for a lotus flower except a pair of dried flying fish wings. I put them behind my left ear as I had seen the native girls do. I wasn’t sure just which one of the sailors on watch I would give that flower to, but that was to come later anyway.

Swede was at the wheel. I whispered to him:

“Will you go forward and get me a can full of grease from the cook? I’ll take the wheel for you.” He was glad of any excuse to get away, so he consented. He brought back a can of salt pork dripping from the galley.

“What are you goin’ to do with that stuff?” he asked.

“Don’t talk so loud, Swede. I’m goin’ to do that Virgin Dance the way we saw them do it on Atafu.”

“Jeeze,” he said.

I went down on the main deck near the mizzenmast and began greasing my body. I took off my overalls, and gave my body a glorious shine that would rival any I saw on the island, and started the dance. I pounded on a rain barrel for a tom-tom. Every sailor on deck beat it just as I got going. They had seen Father’s head appearing out of the companionway, but I hadn’t. The next thing I knew Father grabbed me but my body was so slippery he couldn’t keep a hold on me.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled.

“Just dancing the way the girls danced for us on Atafu,” I answered, and I ran aft and locked myself in the flag locker.

Father followed me, but couldn’t unlock the door. “I’ll knock hell out of you when I lay hands on you,” he promised. I had no intention of ever coming out of that flag locker. Hours later I heard the dinner-bell ring. I was greasy and hot and hungry, but I thought better than to venture out. At dusk I heard a low whistle outside the porthole. I looked out and saw a piece of bread dangling there on a piece of string. The Jap cook had taken my side, and smuggled me some supper. The next morning I unlocked the door and looked around for Father. He was busy on his chart. I stood by him wrapped up in a flag. I thought I might as well get the licking over with so he could go on with his work. However, he didn’t even speak. He reached up to his book shelf and took down an illustrated copy of Dante’s Inferno, and opened it to the illustrations of women burning in fire in hell. I was cured. I would never be a dancer!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

20 A Love Story—which is an end and not a beginning

“Them’s Portuguese Men-o-war, Skipper,” explained Stitches when I asked him what the floating, transparent little blue things were that I saw glistening in the sunlight on the surface of the sea.

“Yep, them little tri-cornered sails on them looks like old Portuguese ships of war, that’s where they gets their name.”

“Are they fish?” I asked.

“Kind of. They is barnacles in the making. When they catch fast to the bottom of a ship with their little blue threads of trailing anchor lines they petrify into shell and that is how barnacles grow.”

I marveled that the little inch high jelly ships could ever turn into the curse of seamen—barnacles! There was a fleet of thousands of them before my eyes.

“As long as they keep moving they is all right, but they are like some cussed folks ashore who, when they stick on to someone else, turn into a damned nuisance,” Stitches concluded. It was another lesson I learned from the sea. Only a few days before we had passed through a floating mass of porous-looking petrified lava—the spewed up evidence of an undersea volcano in eruption. There was so much of it that it gave the appearance of floating land.

“Shore folks call that pumice stone and they grind it up to make tooth paste,” Stitches had said. Why did shore people make everything so difficult for themselves? I used salt to brush my teeth with, not lava from deep sea volcanoes.

“It appears like you was usin’ up a lot of wind askin’ questions with your mouth—and your mind is a-headin’ off to leeward on another tack. Ever since you seen that love dance on Atafu you been moonin’ around.”

Stitches’ words struck home. The beauty of the dance, the thrill of seeing the native girls choose their mates, and the expression of longing on the native men’s faces to possess the girls haunted me. No matter how I tried I couldn’t drive the memory from my mind. I pretended to be interested in ship work, but really just one problem absorbed my mind. I wanted to mean everything to some one person—I wanted to be wanted. My loneliness on shipboard was accentuated after I saw the marriage dance on Atafu. Where would I find a mate? I didn’t have any lotus to wear to make any man choose me. In fact none of the men on board seemed to have the slightest idea of the thoughts constantly in my mind—I was just a nuisance, and no one of them ever showed an inclination to offer himself. I probably never would be taken to a dance where I could pick out my man. Then the thought came: the girls on the island could choose only from the men they knew and the dance was merely a method of selection. After all, getting the man was the important thing and if the native girls had an island full of men to pick from—I had a shipload, so I became encouraged.

I would find my man on board the ship and so I began to look over the crew. First, of course, there was Stitches. I loved him but not as a prospective mate. He looked so much like a wise old turtle, and if I spoke to Stitches about my plan he’d go to Father and I’d get a mug full of salts or a rope’s end on the back of my lap to clear away “crazy fancies.” The rope’s end never really hurt—my body was too tough. But of late my ideas with regard to lickings had changed. They made me furious. I was getting too old to be treated as a child. That’s what I thought. But what I thought made no difference to Father. It was the rope’s end or the salts, clear to the last day we were on the ship.

So it was plain Stitches would not do.

There were the two mates. Strange, but all the time I was on the ship we never had a mate I really liked. I passed them over. There were just four of our old men on board now, Stitches, Swede, Bulgar and Nelson; the rest of the crew to me were just sailors, new men who meant nothing.

I considered Swede again. He was big and strong but he could never stand the test of beautiful girls caressing him without being tempted. Bulgar, well, he was too much of a bully.

I was sitting on the main hatch helping the watch splice ropes into a bumper when the first really concrete idea came to startle me. Nelson was splicing a rope opposite me. Why hadn’t I thought about him? Somehow he was the last one I ever wanted to think about, yet he measured up finer than any of the crew. He could spit a curve, he had hair on his chest. Just looking at him at that moment made me feel funny. I got hot and cold all at once, and my fingers tangled the rope splice.

“Aw, he ain’t the one,” I declared to myself, and I got up and left the hatch. I climbed up to the crosstrees. The more I thought up there at the masthead the more tangled my mind came. Nelson kept coming in my thoughts, but I’d shove him out. That night I stayed on deck very late. The moon was out, and the soft air from the trade winds barely kept the sails full. At four bells, Nelson came to take his trick at the wheel. He didn’t seem to notice me lying in the belly of the spanker sail. He just kept his eyes on the topsails and on the compass. I didn’t dare speak to him as long as Father stayed on deck, but about eleven o’clock Father went below to turn in. The mate was pacing his beat down on the main deck so my way was clear. There is a maritime law that prohibits anyone talking with the man at the helm so I had to do it very quietly.