THE DREAM SHIP 



35 



in consequence song and dance aboard 

 the Dream Ship until dawn touched the 

 peaks of Tai o Hae. 



A native dance is a dreary and monot- 

 onous affair to the average white man, 

 because he does not take the trouble to 

 understand. He sees before him an as- 

 sembly of posturing, howling natives, and 

 seldom realizes that he is witnessing a 

 pageant of history that has never been 

 written or read. 



The performance opened with a panto- 

 mimic representation of the cruise of the 

 Dream Ship. According to the actors' 

 ideas, all aboard suffered acutely from 

 seasickness, were utterly unable to stand 

 upright, and continually looked for land 

 under the shade of an upraised hand. 

 Our vigor in battling with storms was ex- 

 traordinary ; we stumbled over rope ends, 

 clung to the rigging, nearly capsized, and 

 one of us fell overboard, to be rescued, 

 amid shrieks of laughter, by means of a 

 boat-hook and the seat of his pants. 



We were a joke, there was no doubt 

 about that, and any one who takes a 

 10,000-mile journey in a 23 -ton yacht to 

 the Marquesas and wants to be taken 

 seriously had better go elsewhere. 



From such trivialities the performers 

 passed on to what was evidently their 

 stock repertoire — the history of the Mar- 

 quesas as handed down from father to 

 son. It was all there in gesture and 

 chant — mighty battles with their neigh- 

 bors the Paumotans, cannibalism, peace, 

 the advent of the white man with his 

 rum, the plague that still consumes them, 

 and all enacted without resentment. 



That is the most astounding thing, that 

 these people who were living their own 

 lives, and surely as happy lives as ours, 

 bear no ill will for the incredible suffer- 

 ings our civilization has brought among 

 them. Perhaps they do not think, and if 

 so it is as well. 



Conceive yourself, if you can, oh deni- 

 zen of Park Tane, Fifth Avenue, or 

 Champs Elysees, a healthy, upstanding, 

 unclad savage of the South Seas, and liv- 

 ing your own life. 



You may be a cannibal ; and are there 

 no cannibals, and worse, west of Suez? 

 You will be a warrior and fight for your 

 country and your women folk. Is there 

 anything wrong about that? 



You will have a stricter moral code 

 than most white folk, but that cannot be 

 helped. You will hunt and fish and 

 gather fruit for your family — in fact, you 

 will live in the only way you know how 

 to live, in contentment. 



One day an extraordinary-looking ob- 

 ject called a white man presents himself 

 and informs you that you are not living 

 in the right way at all. A much better 

 way, according to this gentleman, is to 

 exchange a ton of your coconuts for a 

 bottle of rum or. a death-dealing instru- 

 ment made of rusty iron. 



You are a tolerant sort of person, and 

 you listen and drink his rum. The next 

 day you have an insufferable headache, 

 and, logically concluding that he has poi- 

 soned you, you kill him. 



But that is not the end. Replicas of 

 him keep arriving, and you find you need 

 his rum and his rusty iron, the one for 

 its elevating properties, the other for its 

 dispatch in dealing with enemies. 



OEE TO HUNT PEARL SHELLS 



To revert to safer topics, there is pearl 

 shell in the Marquesas. The representa- 

 tive of incomparable Infantry told us so 

 while we sat on his incomparable veranda 

 one morning, consuming large quantities 

 of papia, rolls, honey, and coffee, each in 

 his particular brand of pajamas. 



The information brought upon our 

 serene lives at Tai o Hae the white man's 

 blight of avariciousness. Was this thing- 

 possible, with shell at $1,000 a ton, deliv- 

 ered at Philadelphia? Yes; he, the in- 

 comparable, had seen' it through a water- 

 glass, in anything from five to fifteen 

 fathoms, between the islands of Hivaoa 

 and Tahuata. 



Why had it not been prospected^ It 

 was doubtful if any but he and the na- 

 tives knew of its existence. Undoubtedly 

 it was worth looking into. He made us 

 a present of the information, to do with 

 as we willed. His cook was an old Pau- 

 motan diver, who would no doubt ac- 

 company us — Pascal ! — accompany us to 

 the island, a bare qo miles distant. We 

 could take samples of shell to the com- 

 pany in Papeete, and no doubt make ar- 

 rangements — Pascal ! ! — arrangements 

 with them to advance working capital in 

 return for a lien on the shell — Pascal ! ! ! 



