CHAPTER III—­A HOUSE TO LET IN A LOW ISLAND

Never populous, it was yet by a chapter of accidents that I found the island so deserted that no sound of human life diversified the hours; that we walked in that trim public garden of a town, among closed houses, without even a lodging-bill in a window to prove some tenancy in the back quarters; and, when we visited the Government bungalow, that Mr. Donat, acting Vice-Resident, greeted us alone, and entertained us with cocoa-nut punches in the Sessions Hall and seat of judgment of that widespread archipelago, our glasses standing arrayed with summonses and census returns.  The unpopularity of a late Vice-Resident had begun the movement of exodus, his native employes resigning court appointments and retiring each to his own coco-patch in the remoter districts of the isle.  Upon the back of that, the Governor in Papeete issued a decree:  All land in the Paumotus must be defined and registered by a certain date.  Now, the folk of the archipelago are half nomadic; a man can scarce be said to belong to a particular atoll; he belongs to several, perhaps holds a stake and counts cousinship in half a score; and the inhabitants of Rotoava in particular, man, woman, and child, and from the gendarme to the Mormon prophet and the schoolmaster, owned—­I was going to say land—­owned at least coral blocks and growing coco-palms in some adjacent isle.  Thither—­from the gendarme to the babe in arms, the pastor followed by his flock, the schoolmaster carrying along with him his scholars, and the scholars with their books and slates—­they had taken ship some two days previous to our arrival, and were all now engaged disputing boundaries.  Fancy overhears the shrillness of their disputation mingle with the surf and scatter sea-fowl.  It was admirable to observe the completeness of their flight, like that of hibernating birds; nothing left but empty houses, like old nests to be reoccupied in spring; and even the harmless necessary dominie borne with them in their transmigration.  Fifty odd set out, and only seven, I was informed, remained.  But when I made a feast on board the Casco, more than seven, and nearer seven times seven, appeared to be my guests.  Whence they appeared, how they were summoned, whither they vanished when the feast was eaten, I have no guess.  In view of Low Island tales, and that awful frequentation which makes men avoid the seaward beaches of an atoll, some two score of those that ate with us may have returned, for the occasion, from the kingdom of the dead.

It was this solitude that put it in our minds to hire a house, and become, for the time being, indwellers of the isle—­a practice I have ever since, when it was possible, adhered to.  Mr. Donat placed us, with that intent, under the convoy of one Taniera Mahinui, who combined the incongruous characters of catechist and convict.  The reader may smile, but I affirm he was well qualified for either part.