CHAPTER XXXII

A journey over the roof of the world to Oomoa; an encounter with a wild woman of the hills.

Père Olivier tried to dissuade me from walking back to Oomoa, and offered me his horse, but I determined to go afoot and let Orivie, a native youth, be my mounted guide. Orivie is named for Père Olivier; there being no "l" in the Marquesan language, the good priest's name is pronounced as if spelled in English Oreeveeay.

The horse, the usual small, tough mountain-pony, was caught, and upon him we strapped the saddle with cow-skin stirrups, hairy and big, and a rope bridle. Orivie, handsomely dressed in wrinkled denim trousers, a yellow pareu and an aged straw hat, mounted the beast, and bidding farewell to the friends I had made, we began to climb the trail through the village.

At each of the dozen houses we passed I had to stop and say Kaoha to the occupants. In these islands there is none of that coldness toward the casual passer-by which is common in America, where one may walk through the tiniest village and receive no salutation unless the village constable sees a fee in arresting the wayfarer for not having money or a job. All the elders were tattooed, and as every island and even every valley differed in its style of skin decoration, these people had new patterns and pictures of interest to me. I made it a point to linger a little before each house, praising the appearance of these tattooed old people, both because it pleased them and because it is a pity that this national art expression should die out at the whim of whites who substitute nothing for it. By this deprivation, as by a dozen others, the Marquesans have been robbed of racial pride and clan distinction, and their social life destroyed.

Despite this delay, Orivie and I were soon past the houses. As population has decreased in all the valleys the people have moved down from the upper heights to districts nearer the sea, for neighborliness and convenience. Only a few in some places have remained in the further glens, and these are the non-conformists, who retain yet their native ways of thought and living and their ancient customs. This I knew, but I pursued my way behind the climbing little horse, enjoying the many sights and perfumes of the jungle, in happy ignorance of an experience soon to befall me with one of these residents of the heights. It fell upon me suddenly, the most embarrassing of several experiences that have divided me between fear and laughter.

Perhaps a mile above the village, in a wilderness of shrubbery, trees, and giant ferns, we came upon a cross-trail, a thin line of travel hardly breaking the dense growth, and saw a woman appear from among the leaves. She was large, perhaps five feet, ten inches, tall; a Juno figure, handsome and lithe. Such a woman of her age, about twenty-two years, does the work of a man, makes copra, fells trees, lifts heavy stones, and is a match for the average man in strength. She was dark, as are all Marquesans who live a hardy and vigorous life unsheltered from sun and wind, and in the half shadow of the forest she seemed like an animal, wild and savage. Her scarlet pareu and necklace of red peppers added color to a picture that struck me at once as bizarre and memorable.

The horse had passed her, and turning about in the saddle Orivie replied to her greeting, while I added a courteous "Kaoha!" She looked at me with extraordinary attention, which I ascribed to my white ducks and traveling cap, while she asked who I was. Orivie replied that I was a stranger on my way over the mountains. She advanced into the main trail then, letting slip from her shoulders a weight of packages, tea, and other groceries, and suddenly embraced me, smelling my face and picking me up in a bear hug that, startled as I was, nearly choked me.

"Take care!" cried Orivie, in a tone between alarm and amusement. I backed hastily away, and sought to take refuge beside a boulder, but she vaulted after me, and seizing me again, resumed her passionate attack.

"She is a woman of the mountains! She will take you away to her paepae!" my excited guide yelled warningly.

That was her intention. There was no doubt about it. She seized me by the arm and tried to drag me away from the boulder to which I clung. For several moments I was engaged in a struggle more sincere than chivalrous on my part and ardently demonstrative on hers. But as I absolutely would not accede to her desire to give me a home in the hills, she was forced to give up hope after a final embrace, which I ended rudely, but scientifically. Rising to her feet again, she picked up her burden, which must have weighed fully a hundred pounds, and went her way.

"She is a hinenao pu," said Orivie. That means literally a coquette without reason. I did not seek for double meaning in the remark, but expressed my opinion of all hinenaos as I replaced my cap and readjusted my garments.

"These women of the heights are all like that," said my guide. "They have no sense and no shame. If they see a stranger near their home, they will seize him, as men do women. If they are in the mood, they will not take no for an answer. It has always been their custom, as that of the hill men capturing the valley women. It is shameful, but it has never changed. She would give you food and treat you with kindness as a man does his bride. You know, in the old days the strong women had more than one husband; sometimes four or five, and they chose them in this way. If you were nearer where Tepu lives, she would make you a prisoner. They have often done that."

"Do we go near her home?" said I.

"No; we see no more paepaes," replied Orivie.

"Then," I said, "let us hasten onward."

We mounted at every foot, and soon were above the cocoanuts. The trail was a stream interspersed with rocks, for in these steep accents the path, worn lower than its borders, becomes in the rainy season the natural bed of the trickle or torrent that runs to the valley. The horse leaped from rock to rock, planting his back feet and springing upward to a perch, upon which he hung until he got balance for another leap. I followed the animal, knowing him wiser in such matters than I. From time to time Orivie urged me to ride and when I refused gave me the knowing look bestowed upon the witless, the glance of the asylum-keeper upon the lunatic who thinks himself a billiard ball.

We were soon so high that I saw below only a big basin, in which was a natural temple, the vast ruin of a gigantic minster, it seemed, and across the basin a rugged, saw-like profile of the mountain-top. Eons ago the upper valley was a volcano, when the island of Fatu-hiva was under the sea. Once the fire burst through the crater side toward the present beach, and after the explosion there was left a massive gateway of rock, through which we had come from the village. Towering so high that they were hardly perceptible when we had been beside them, they showed from this height their whole formation, like the wrecked walls of a stupendous basilica.

Up and up we went. The way was steeper than any mountain I have ever climbed, except the sheer sides of chasms where ropes are necessary, or the chimneys of narrow defiles. I have climbed on foot Vesuvius, Halaakela, Kilauea, Fuji, and Mayon, and the mountains of America, Asia, and South America, though I know nothing by trial of the terrors of the Alps. However, the horse could and did go up the steep, though it taxed him to the utmost, and these horses are like mountain-goats, for there is hardly any level land in the Marquesas.

Unexpectedly, the sea came in view, with the Catholic church and its white belfry, but in another turn it disappeared. I fell again and again; the horse floundered among the stones in the trough and fell, too, Orivie seizing trees or bushes that lined the banks to save himself. Rocks as large as hundred-ton vessels were on the mountainside above, held from falling only by small rocks interposed, feeble obstacles to an avalanche. Beetling precipices overhung the village. I thought they might fall at any moment, and the Marquesans recount many such happenings. In Tai-o-hae three hundred natives were entombed forever by a landslide, and Orivie pointed out the tracks of such slides, and immense masses of rock in the far depths below, beside strips of soft soil brought down by the rains.

The wild guava and the thorny keoho, the taro, the pandanus and the banian, all the familiar and useful trees and plants were left behind. We toiled onward in a wilderness of stone.

I climbed around the edge of a precipice, and stood above the sea. The blue ocean, as I looked downward, was directly under my eyes, and I could see the fishing canoes like chips on the water. It was a thousand feet straight down; the standing-place was but three feet wide, wet and slippery. The mighty trade-wind swept around the crags and threatened to dislodge me.

That demoniacal impulse to throw oneself from a height took possession of me. Almost a physical urging of the body, as if some hidden Mephistopheles not only poured into the soul his hellish advice to end your life, but pushed you to the brink. As never before the evil desire to fall from that terrible height attacked me, and the world became a black dizziness. Struggling, I threw out my hand; the unconscious grip upon a stunted fern, itself no barrier against falling, gave me a mental grip upon myself, and the crisis was passed.

On hands and knees I crept around the ledge, for the wind was a gale, and a slip of a foot might mean a drop of a fifth of a mile.

The next valley, Tapaatea, came in view, and Hanavave a cleft in the mountains, the stream a silver cord. A cascade gleamed on the opposite side against the Namana hills. It is Vaieelui, the youth Orivie informed me, as we went higher, still on the dangerous ledge that binds the seaward precipice. All the valleys converged to a point, and nothing below was distinct.

Higher we went, and were level with the jagged ridge of the Faeone mountains toward the north, and could look through the pierced mountain, Laputa; through the hole, tehavaiinenao, that is like a round window to the sky, framed in black, about which legends are raised. Orivie smiled indulgently as I explained to him that that hole was made by sea-currents when Laputa was under the ocean. He knew that a certain warrior, half god and half man, threw his spear through the mountain once upon a time.

We came then to the veriest pitch of the journey, like the roof of the world, and it was necessary to crawl about another ledge that permitted a perpendicular view of 2500 feet, so desperate in its attraction that had I known the name of that saint who is the patron of alpenstock buyers I would have offered him an ave. This was the apex. Once safely past it, the trail went downward to a plateau.

I caught up with Orivie and the horse, and my muscles so rejoiced at the change of motion in descent that almost involuntarily I took a few steps of a jig and uttered the first verses of "I Only Had Fifty Cents." Mosses and ferns by the billion covered every foot of the small plateau. There were no trees. The trail was a foot deep in water, like an irrigation ditch. One still might easily break one's neck. And I reflected that Père Olivier crosses many times a year between Oomoa and Hanavave, in his black soutan and on his weary horse, in all weathers, alone; it is a fact to treasure for recalling when one hears all missionaries included in the accusation of selfishness that springs so often to the lips of many men.

We reached the plane of cocoanuts, and I asked Orivie to fetch down a couple, after essaying to perform that feat myself and failing dismally besides scratching my nose and hands. Bare feet are a requisite--bare and tough as leather. The Marquesans cut notches in the trees after they reach maturity, to make the climbing easier, a custom they have in many parts of Asia, but not in Tahiti. These footholds are made every three feet on opposite sides. They are cut shallowly, inclining downward and outward, in order not to wound the wood of the tree or to form pockets in which water would collect and rot it. With these aids they climb with ease, using a rope of purau bark tied about the wrists, and by these they pull themselves from notch.

I have seen a child of six years reach the top of a sixty-foot tree in a minute or so, and I have seen a man or woman stop on the way, fifty feet from the earth, and light a cigarette. Slim, fat, chiefs or commoners, all learn this knack in infancy. Men who puff along the road because of their bulk will attain the branches of a palm with the agility of monkeys.

Orivie had no notches to assist him, but tied his ankles together with a piece of tough vine, leaving about ten inches of play, and with this band, pressed tightly against the tree, giving firm support while his arms, clasping the trunk above, drew him upward a yard at a time, he was at the crest of a fifty-foot tree in a minute, and threw down two drinking nuts. They were as big as foot-balls and weighed about five pounds each. We had no knife, but broke in the tops with stones, and holding up the shining green nuts, let the wine flow down our throats. Never was a better thirst-quencher or heartener! The hottest noon on the hottest beach, when the coral burns the feet, this nectar is cool. After the most arduous climb, when lungs and muscles ache with weariness, it freshens strength and lifts the spirit.

By the cocoanut-grove ran a level stream shaded with pandanus, and following it, we commenced again to mount on a pathway arched by small trees, down which the stream coursed. The cocoanuts fell away as we went up the ridge and emerged upon a tableland covered with ferns, some green and some dead and dry, carpeting the flat expanse as far as eye could see with a mat of lavender, the green and the brown melting into that soft color.

We were further on the broad roof on the mountains, in the middle now and not on the edge, so we ran and galloped and shouted. Wild horses fled from us, and we heard the grunt of boar in the fern thickets. The fan-palms, dwarfs, but graceful, intermingled with magnificent tree-ferns, while above them curved the huetu, the immense mountain plantain, called fei in Tahiti, where they are the bread of the people; they have ribbed, emerald leaves, as big as a man. Feeders of dark people in many lands for thousands of years, theirs is the same golden fruit I had eaten at breakfast with Père Olivier, three thousand feet below. They grow only in the mountains, and the men who bring them into the villages have feet shaped like a hand spread out to its widest, with toes twisted curiously by climbing rocks and grasping roots for support.

The rain began to fall again, and the wind came stronger, but now we were going down in earnest. The sea shone again, but it was on the Oomoa side. We passed under trees hung with marvelous orchids, the puaauetaha, Orivie said, parasitic vines related to the vanilla as the lion is related to the kitten, cousins, but with little family likeness.

The trail became very dangerous at this point, a rocky slide, with steps a foot or two apart like uneven stairs, and all a foot, or sometimes two, under running water. I jumped and slid and slipped, following the unhappy plunging horse. Darkness came on quickly with the blinding rain, and the descent was often at an angle of forty-five degrees, over rocks, eroded hills, along the edge of a precipice. I fell here, and saved myself by catching a root in the trail and pulling myself up again. I would have dropped upon the roof of the gendarme's house a thousand feet below.

We heard the sound of the surf, and letting the horse go, Orivie led me, by that sense we surrender for the comforts of civilization, down the bed of a cascade to the River of Oomoa, which we waded, and then arrived at Grelet's house. We had come thirteen miles. I was tired, but Orivie made nothing of the journey.

Covered with mud as I was, I went to the river and bathed in the rain and, returning to the house, looked after my health. A half ounce of rum, a pint of cocoanut-milk from a very young nut, the juice of half a lime just from the tree, two lumps of sugar, and I had an invigorating draught, long enough for a golf player after thirty-six holes, and delicate enough for a debutante after her first cotillion. The Paumotan boys and Pae looked on in horror, saying that I was spoiling good rum.