CHAPTER XXIII 



My life at Tautira — The way I cook my food — Ancient Tahitian sports — 

 Swimming and fishing — A night hunt for shrimp and eels. 



T'YOTsTNI and Choti were the only aliens except 

 myself in all Tautira, nor did others come during 

 my stay. The steamships, spending only twen- 

 ty-four hours in Papeete port every four or five weeks, 

 sent no trippers, and the bureaucrats, traders, and so- 

 journers in Papeete apparently were not aware of the 

 enchantment at our end of the island. T'yonni had 

 found Tautira only after four or five voyages to Tahiti, 

 and Choti had first come as his guest. T'yonni had no 

 art but that of living, while Choti had studied in Paris, 

 and was bent on finding in these scenes something 

 strong and uncommon in painting, as Gauguin, now 

 dead, had found. They lived separately, T'yonni 

 studying the language and the people, — he had been a 

 master at a boys' school in the East, — and the artist 

 painting many hours a day. But we three joined with 

 the villagers in pleasure, and in pulling at the nets in 

 the lagoon. 



The routine of my day was to awake about six o'clock 

 and see the sun swinging slowly up out of the sea and 

 hesitating a moment on the level of the horizon, the 

 foliage brightened with his beams. I sprang from my 

 bed, washed my hands and face, and hastened to the 

 fare umu, the kitchen in a grove of pandanus trees, a 

 few steps away. There from a pile of cocoanut husks 



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