Evening Star Newspaper, June 1, 1924, Page 72

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON. D. C, JUNE 1 1924 —PART 5. wimmer Is Penned Under Coral Reef in South Sea Adventure Boat Turns Turtle in Furiou: All about seemed to me solld coral | wve responded to the lure of the since the earliest teuched their mys- terious shores. Frederick O'Brien is distinguished for his success in catching and interpreting the color and atmosphere—the very essence—of Polynes He s widely known for this remarkable ability, through his books, “White Shadows of the South S “Mystic Isles of .the South and “Atolls of the Sun particularly for his spirit of ad- which thoroughly the pr serfes of I Among the man Caucasians who hi ' Nouth Seas navigators sent lowing article, the Mr. O'Brien is start- tug from Papeete, in Tahiti, for a voyage to the myterious atolls of the Paumotu Archipelago. He et forth in the schooner Marara, or Flying Fish, commanded by Capt. Jean Moet, a Frenchman. Among the passengers were Capt. Moet's wife, Virginia, two nonde- int cters of the South as. Lying Bill and MeHenr: Kopcke, a quarter-native. and “hocolat, a brown pup. The saflor at the wheel. Pirl a Tu- ahine, a Ti was an expert Boatr landin hitian whom the success of pended BY FREDERICK O'BRIEN. M first of the eighty Paumotu atolls, as we approached it on the morning of the fourth day out from Papeete, Tahitl, raised « delicate green fringe of trees four or five miles away. It lay so low that from the deck of the schoon- or it could not be seen even on the clearest days at a greater distance. One heard the surf before the island appeared. It a few feet above the plane of the sea, flat, with Wil or eminence upon it, a leaf pon the surface of a pond. 1 could hardly bel it part of the familtar o It more like the fairy island of childhood. the coral strand of youth, the lotus land of po 1t veality, the most beautiful, | ing, inconceivable sight upon | was onl no or was, fasci the oc As o was a nu . 1 saw that Niau composed of & islets or motds med the land on which were nd shrubx and the people. & oval itself was inclosed by a hidden re hundred feet | wide, on whi kers crashed 1 spilled in a flood of foaming bil- 5 There heauty of the but th severul was no enthusiasm over the in my heaving breast, and [ concealed {t as 1 would | free thinking in a monastery » Me- | Henry and Jean and Virginia a lovely it w speck upon the ocean on which to cozen inferfor creatures. “Madre de Dio vociferated the | skipper. when, a mile from the gleam- | Ing tecthi of the reef, he brought the | Marara up Into the wind and halted | her like a4 panting mare thrown upon her haunches. “Mc'onree et M'sieu' | O'Breson, you go 'shore. tomble | een, pronto | He released the wheel to the mate, and we three scrambled over the rail and jumped upon the cargo as the | hoat rose on a wave. Joining the four | Tahitians who werec at the heavy oar with Pirl a Tuahine at the stern holding a long sweep for a rudde It was attached by a bight of rope, and by a longer rope kept from float- | ing away In case of mishup. Now came as delicate a bit of actfon with sails as a vachtsman. with his other-in-law as a guest. might recklessly essay. Capt. Moet sang out from his perch on a barrel to the halt-caste at the wheel to go ahead, and the Flying Fish. which, for a few minutes had been trembling in leash, turned on her heel and b cded di- rectly for the streak of foam. the roar of which drowned our voices at that distance. Eight hundred feet away. when it must have looked to a landsman on the schooner that she was almost In the breakers, we cast off the line and took to our oars. It was nice sea- manship to save time by minimizing rowing, but certainly not in Lioyds' rules of safety. Those who reckon dangers do not laugh in these parts. A merry rashness helps ease of mind. In five minutes our boat was in the surf, rolling and tumbling, and T on my merchandise peak clasped a bale forvently, though McHenry and Moet appeared glued to barrels which they u exc atoll was 'k or distorted messes of limestone, the re covering and uncovering with surging water, but suddenly ame into my altering view, as the steersman headed toward it, a strange pit in the unylelding strata. Into this maelsrom the water rushed fu- riously, drawn in and sucked out with each roll of the ocean. The Tahitians, at & word, stopped rowing, while Piri a Tuahine scrutinized intently the on- rushing waves. He judged the speed and force of each as it neared him, and on his accuracy of eye and mind depended our lives, Wk ok HE oarsmen ' tugged with their blades to hold the bor*® against the sweeping tide, and abruptly, rith a wild shout, Piri a Tuahine t them to pulling like mad, while he with his long oar both steered and sculled. “Tamau te paina!” all yelled, amid the boom of the surf. “Hold on to the wood!” And down into the pit we tore. Down and fn, the boat raced through the vortex of the chute, the pllot avoiding nar- rowly the coffin-like sides of the men- acing depression, and the sailors, with thelr oars aloft for the few dread seconds, awaiting with joyous shouts the emergence into the shallows. All was In the strong hands and stendy nerves of Pirl a Tuahine. A miscalculated swerve of his sturdy lever, and we would have been smashed like eggshells, boat and bodies, against the massive sides. But spirit and wood were steadfast, and I rode as high and dry from the im- minent Scylla as if on a camel in the Sahara. In a few twinklings of an eye we were past the reef, and In the moat in fast shoaling, quiet water, studded with hummocks and heaps of coral. The satlors leaped into it shoulder deep and guided and forced the boat as far shoreward as possible to cur- tail the cargo carrying distance. Capt. Moet, McHenry and 1 went up to our walsts and reached the beach. The crusader who entered Jerusa- lem had no deeper feeling of realiza- tion of a long-cherished hope than I when my foot imprinted its mold in the glistening sand of the atoll of u. I stood In my track and scanned it, as Crusoe did the first hu- man mark other than his own he saw on his lonely island. Not with his dismay, but yet with a slight panic, a pleasant but alarmed perturbation, an awe at the wonder of the scene. The moment had the tenseness of that when I saw my first cocoanut palm. It mingled a fear that T had passed one of the great climacterics of vis- ual emotion. Here was I in the arcanum of ro- mance, the promised land of chimeéra, after years of faint expectation. I was almost stunned by the reality, and 1 felt sensibly the need of some SCENE OF FREDERICK O'BRIEN'S A€\'E TURES IN THE SOUTH SEAS. one to share the pathos that op- pressed me. 1 did not forsake my love for Tahiti. That was fixed, but this atoll was not the same. Tahiti was an adored mistress, this a light o' love, u dazzling, alien siren, with whom one could not rest in safety; a fanciful abode for a brief period, as incomparable to Tahiti as an ice fleld to a garden. “What the devil's eatin’ on you?" exclaimed the irked McHenry, ques- tioningly as he glared at me. “Aren’t your feet mates?” B STRUCK off the road toward the center of the island, through fields of broken coral, mysterious in its oppositeness to all other terres- trial formations. There was no earth rode jauntily. Tt was now I saw the art of the Polynesians, the ablest breaker boatmen in the world. “DOWN INTO THE PIT WE TORE. A MISCALCULATED SWERVE OF HIS STURDY LEVER AND WE WOULD HAVE BEEN SMASHED LIKE EGG SHELLS.” -l 2 that one could see or feel, but a matted vegetation in spots showed that even in these whited sepulchers there | “FEAR STRUCK ME WEAK; I REALIZED MY EXTRAORDINARY PERIL.” of the coral animals outlandish plants had found the substance of life. The lofty cocoanut palm. standing straight as a mast or curving in singular grace, grew luxuriously—the ever- green banner of this glant fleet of anchored ships of stone. Through a& few hundred vards of this weird desert-jungle I reach the lagoon which the inner merge of the great coral reef inclosed. 1 sat down under a dwarf cocoanut and let my eyes and wind dwell upon the gorgeousness of the prospect and the insight into nature's reticences it afforded. Everywhere were the tombs or skeletons of the myriad creatures who had labored and died to construct these footstools of might. Could man assume that these eons of years and countless births, efforts and deaths were for any concern of his? But else, he asked, why were they? To show the boundless power and caprice of the Creator? Was not the world made for humanity? The thud of a cocoanut beside me stirred me from my reverie. I was wet with the wading ashore and the sweat of my walk, and so I removed my few garments and plunged Into the lagoon. Going down to test the declivity a yard or € from the water's edge, I dropped twenty feet and touched no bottom. The water was 1impid, delicious, and I could see the glant coral fans waving fifty feet below me. As I loitered on my back in the water and looked down Into the crys- tal depths and at the cloudless sky, I had & moment's phantasm of a great city, its lofty trade battlements, its crowded streets, the pale, set faces of its people, the splendor of the rich houses, the squalor of the tenements, the police with clubs and guns, and the shrieking traffic. Here was the sweetest contrast, where man had hardly touched the primitive work of nature. It was long from summer and far from Gotham. Eventually McHenry and I caught the last boat back to the Marara, Moet having stayed for one trip only. A current set against us all night. Now I understood fully the alarms and misgivings that had caused the first and following discoverers of the “Pernicious Islands” to curse them by the titles they gave them. Our cur- rent was of the mischievous sort that upset logarithms and dead reckoning and put ships ashore. ‘This group is a graveyard of ves- sels,” sald McHenry. "And there'd be ten times as many wrecked it they come here. Wait till you see the county of Roxburgh at Takaroa. I've been crulsin’ round here more'n twenty years and I never saw the current the same. There's no leeway to run from a wind past beating. It's lee shore in some bloody direction all the time. There's a foot or two be tween high and low, and it's low In the lagoon when the moon Is full. It's high when the moon rises and when It sets. In atolls where there's a pass into the lagoon there's a devil of a current in the lagoon at the Jowerin' tide, and In the sea r the lagoon when the tide is risin We battled with the current and a fresh wind during the long, dark hours, Jean Moet nevet leaving the deck and I keeping him company. * x % % NAA, or Chain Island, as Capt. Cook named It because of its eleven motus or Islets, strung like emeralds and pearls in a rosary, was not visible at daybreak, but as I studled the horizon the sky turned to a brilliant green. 1 thought some dream of that Tir-na'n-Og spoken of by Tome in Niau obsessed me. I turned my back and waited for my eyes to right themselves. One sees green in the rainbow and green in the sunset, but never had I known a morning sky to be of such & hu McHenry came on deck in his pa. Jjamas and looked about. “Erin go bragh!" he remarked. “Ireland is castin’ a shadow on the bloody heaven.” i Some curious relation of the lagoon to the sky had painted this hazy lawn on high. It was like a great fleld of luscious grass, at times flimy, paling to the color of absinthe touched with water, and again & true aquamarine, as I have seen the bay of Todos San- tos, at Ensenada of Lower California. Probably it is the shallowness of the waters, which in this lagoon are strangely different from most of the inland basins of the South Sea Isles. To these mariners, who moved their 1ittle boats between them, the mirage was famed; and the natives had many a legend of its origin and cause, and of their kind being saved from star- vation or thrist by its kindly glint. McHenry called down the compan- fonway, “Hey, monster, you can see the grass on Anaa. Vite-vite!” Moet, who was below, drinking a cup of coff leaped up the compan- fonway. He called out swift orders to go over on the other tack, and headed straight for the mirage. The schooner heeled to the breeze, now freshening as the sun became hotter, and we reeled off six or seven knots with all canvas drawing. In an hour the celestial plot of green had van- ished, fading out slowly as we ad- vanced, and we began to glimpse the cocoanuts on the beach, though few trees showed on the skyline, and they were twisted as in travail Anaa, others of these islands and Tahitl, too, had suffered terribly by & cyclone a few years ago. More than any other island of this group Anaa had felt the devastating force of the matal rorofal, the “wind that kills"—the wind that slew Lovaina' son and made her cut her halr in mourning. Hikueru lost more peo- ple, because there were many ther but Anaa was mangled and torn as & picador's horse by the horns of the angry bull. A half-mlle away we could plainly see ‘the havoc of wind and wave. The reef itself had been broken away In places, and coral rocks as blg as houses hurled upon the beach. Word we got at Ansa of a few tons of copra at Kaukura sent us hurrying there. The wind was against us and we drew long sides of a triangle be- fore we reached that atoll, which wa as our starting point, at the base of the isosceles. Kaukura was a diver- gence from our Intended course, but these schooners were like birds of the alr, which must take their sustenance as fortune wills, Copra was scarce, and competition in buying. flerce. * %k * X AUKURA rose from the sea at dawn, after a night of wearing and tacking. It was an atoll, irregu- larly annular in shape, twenty-six miles long and ten wide, wooded in patches and with vast stretches where only the dazzling coral shone. It, too, had been spoiled In prosperity by an inimical wind and tide, and the cocoa palms had been annihilated that once had grown upon all its many component islets. Landmarks we gradually discerned —a village, two churches and a row of houses, and then the French tri- color on & pole. The surf broke with a flerce roaring on the. reef, and when McHenry and I left the schooner Moet stayed aboard, as the wind was ominous. There was no pass Into the lagoon at this village and even the pit in the barrier reef had been made by French engineers. They had blown up the modrepore rock and made a gateway for small boats. The schooner did not take our painter, for the breeze was too stiff for the venture, and so we had a half mile to row. When we neared the reef and entered the pit I felt that it was touch-and-go, for we rose and tottered on the huge swells and dived Into their hollows with a prophetio certainty of capsizing. I could hardly keep on the box under me and swayed forebodingly. Then suddenly the steering oar caught under a bank of coral. I bare- ly heard the cry of Pirl a Tuahine, “E era! There she goes!” when the boat rose on its stern with a twisting motion, as if a whale had struck it with its fluke, and turned turtle. 1 was slighted into the water at its topmost teeter, falllng yards away from it, and in the air I seemed to see the Tahitians leaping for safety from its crushing thwarts and the ocargo. McHenry's “What the bloody—!" as we both somersaulted, was in my ears a8 I was plunged beneath the | surtace. With the fear of encountering the boat, the dark bulk of which I saw dimply above me, I swam hard under the water a dozen strokes and rose to find myself beneath the reef, which grew in broken ledges. When my head in stunning contact with the rock knelled a warning to my brain I opened my eyes. There was only blackness. I dived again, a strange terror chilling me, but when I came up I was still penned from air In abysmal darkness. Now fear struck me weak. I re- alized my extraordinary peril, a peril glimpeed In nightmares. I had pene- trated fifteen or twenty feet under the ledge, and I had no sense of ai- rection of the edge of the coral. My distance from it was considerable; I knew by the invisible gloom. With a fleeting recollection of camera films in my shirt pocket came the choking dread of suffocation and death in this labyrinth. I suppose I invoked God and His Son to save me. Probably in my agony I promised big things to them and hu- manity If I survived. I kept my eyes open and struck out. After swim- iming a few yards I felt the coral shelving inwardly. 1 r had gone farther from my only goal of life. I felt the =nd was close, but still, in desperation, moved my limbs vigorously. izea * Ok * ok THEN 1 felt the lashing about me. Something seized my arm. Shark stories leaped from my memory's cold storage to my very soul. My blood was an icy stream from head to toes. Singular to relate, I was aware of a profound regret for my murders of many sharks—who, after all, 1 rea- soned with an atavistic impulse of propitiation, were but working out the wige plan of the Creator. But the animal that grasped my arm did not bite. It held me firmly, and dragged me out from that murky heil, until in a few seconds the light, God's eldest and loveliest daughter, appear- ed faintly, and then, bright as light- ring, and all of a sudden, I was in the center of the sun, my mouth open at last, my chest heaving, my heart pumping madly, and my head burst- ing with pain. I was in the arms of Piri a Tuahine, who, as all the other Tahitians, had swum under the reef in search of me. In the two or three minutes—or that half hour—during which I had been breathless the sailors had re- captured the boat and were righting it, the oars still fastened to the gun- wales. I was glad to be hauled into the empty boat, along with McHenry, who was sputtering and cursing. “Gorbli-me?’ he sald, as he spat out salt water, “you made a bloody fool o' yerself doin' that! Why didn’t ye look how I handled meself? But I lost a half-pound of tobacco by that christenin’.” I was laid down on the cargoless seats, and the men rowed through the moat, smiling at me with a worthy sense of superfority, while McHenry dug the soaked tobacco out of his trousers pocket. “Ye can alwéys trust the Kanaka to get ye out o' the water if ye capsize,” ald he, artfully. “We've taught him to think o' the white man first. He blamed well knows where he'd get off, otherwise.” A hundred feet farther we came to a spit of rocks, which stopped prog- ress. A swarm of naked children were playing about it. Assisted by the Tahitians I was lifted to my feet, and with McHenry, continued to the sand. There I took stock of my physical self. I was battered and bruised, but no bones were broken. My shins were scraped and my entire body bleeding as if a sharp steel comb had raked me. My head was bloody, but my skull without a hole in it, or even marked depression, except my usual one where phrenologists locate the bump of reverence. I was sick at my stomach, and my legs bent under me. I knew that I would be as well as ever soon, unless polsoned, but would bear the marks of the coral. All these white men who journeyed about the Paumotus bore indelible scars of coral wound. water * & x * Y head was bleeding and aching, and my body quivering with the biting pain of its abraded surface. Walking along the beach I narrow ly escaped a more serious acciden than the disaster of the reef, for only the warning of my triendly native, stayed me from treading upon a nohu, the deadliest underfoot danger of the Paumotus. It was a fish peculiarly hateful to hu- hat 1) companion, a s Surf and White Traveler Dives Too Energetically in Effort to Avoid Craft. mans, yet gifted Ly nature with both defensive disguise and offemstve weapons, a remnant of the ®erce struggle for survival in whicn so many forms of life had disappesred or aitered in changing environment The nohu lay on the coral strand where the tide lapped it, looking the twin of a battered mossy rock, so de~ cefving that one must have the sight of the aborigine to avold stepping upon it, if in one's way. Put a foot on it, and before one could move the nohu raised the bony spines of its dorsal fin and plerced one's flesh as would a row of hatpins: not only pierced, but simultancously injected through its spines a virulent poison that lay at the base of a malevolent gland The nohu possessed a protective coloring and shape more deludtag than any other mnoxious creature ! know, and kept its mouth shut cxcapt when it swallowed the prey for wlich it lay in walt. TIts mouth is very large, and a brilliant lemon-color in- side, o that if it parts its lips it be- trays itself. Brother to the nohu in evil purpose is the tataratham. But what a trickster |s nature! The nohu is as ugly as a squid, and the tatarai- hau beautiful as a piece of the sunset a brilliant red, with transverse bands of chocolate, bordered with ebony “If you can spit on the nohu before he sticks his tactae into you it will not polson you," sagely sald my savior, as he stabbed the wretch witl his knife. Pliny, said: “All men carry about them thaih which {s polson to serpents; for if it be true that s reported, they will no better abide the touching with man’s spittle than scalding water cast upon them; but if it happen to light within their mouth, espectally if it comes from a man that is fasting, it {s pres- ent death.” Pliny in his day may have known of quick-witted people who, when as- salled by a snake, had presence of mind to expectorate in his mouth, but the most hungry, sallvary man could hardly avail himself of this prophy- lactic unless he recognized the nohu before treading upon him. The Pau- motuans employ the mape, the native chestnut, the atae, ape and rea moe- ruru. These are all “yarh” remedies and the first, the juice of the chest nut, squeezed on the head and nec! the The French as translated by Holland swear by doctors advise mor- phine injection or laudanum exter- nally, or to suck the wound and cup it. Coagulating the poison in situ by alcohol, acids or caustic alkali, or the use of turpentine, is also recom- mended. If the venom is not speedily drawn out or nullified, the feet of the vietim turn black and coma ensues The French called the nohu. La Mort The Death ¥ My Paumotuan friend and Elde Kidd, a missionary of the Reorgan- ized Church of the Latter Day Sain together gave me this information and when we brought the mohu to the house in which he lived the cler- gyman said we would eat it The native heated an old iron pipe and after flaying the skin off the fish bofled it. The flesh was remarkably sweet and tender. I lay on a and, after t American had laved me with the lini- ment, the Paumotuan, a Konito elder massaged me for an hour. duringy which grievous process I fell asleep. (Copyright, 1924.) REPELS WEEK END GUESTS Ring Lardner Finds Epidemic Signs Effective and Also Invents New Set of Names for Country Houses Such as “Knot Inn,” “Nobody's Home" and *“Nolicker.” and you would advise him to do the same as everybody in the house must O the editor: Summer is pretty near with us and city folks is beginning to long for the fresh air of the suburbs which means that next thing you know they will be dropping in on their ceuntry friends along about dinner time Fri- day night just for a little visit. They didn’t have no Intentions of staying over the week end or even all night haven't no {dear how their suit case with their nightgown in it happened to be broughten along. ‘Well friends I hope they won't nobody think I ain’t hospitable but we country jakes has got our own life to lead and Saturday and Sun- day 1 pposed to be the days set to 1 side for weeding the garden, laying around the house in your kimona and getting acquainted with the kiddies. They certainly waan't never intended to be spent shaking up cocktaile and apoligising to the hired gal. The situation in our littls settle- ment has become acute. Just a little wile ago & young author give up his home here and moved to Europe be- cause his N. Y. friends seemed to think he was running a road house. People with the welfare of Great Neck at their heart is scared that others will follow his sample and that in s few years they won't be enough citizens left to warrant keeping the constable. It {s with a view to avold- ing this crisis and prolonging our oivic existence that the writer makes the following suggestions. People a big mistake In giv- ing thelr country homes names that 18 too cordial and seductive. Like for inst. a name like Shaddy Nook may sound innocent enough to the owner of the place but the passer bys reads it or hears it mentioned and it lstens so nice and cosy that they can't resist from paying you a call. Think how much more impossible it is then it you have gave your joint some such sobriquet as Kum Inn, Uwanta Kum- back, Dew Drop Inn, Well Kum and etc. If you have got to nickname the place at all, pick out something neu- tral like any of the following: Stayaway, Keepaway, Knot Inn, Nobody's Home, Nolicker, Key Pout, No Add Mittens, and etc. They was one friend of mine that found It very effective to borrow a 1ot of signs from the board of health and paste them on the front of the housé, changing them every couple weeks. These signs was all in gay colors and read Small Pox, Measles, Diphtheria, Whooping Cough, Mumps, Leprosy and etc. Still another friend hung & plece of crepe on his door Bob and left it there all one summer N T Y N “THESE SIGNS WAS ALL IN GAY COLORS.” and the only callers he had was mes- senger boys with floral tributes. But if you can’t keep visitors away with these kind of hints, why the best way to do is pretend like you was ticked to death to see them, ask them to stay all night and then fix 1t 50 as they won't be libel to come again. This can be accomplished by several subtle little reminders. For example don't Invite them to set down and when they finely do set down don’t offer to get them any refresh- ments and if they come right out and ask for something, why give them some terrible stuff which you won't have no trouble procuring same for the purpose. Along about 8 p.m. when they be- gin to mct like they was expecting something to eat, make the remark that you and your Mrs. is both on a dlet and all.the meal you have is noon day lunch but if they are hungry, why you think maybe they's some crackers and sardines in the ice box. In the 0ld days the most commonest ways of giving a guest a rollicking evening was to either set down to the plano and pick out all the tunes you ever heard with one finger or else tell him a full outline of a play or a novel which you intend to write when you can spare the time. Now days however the methods of torture is much simpler. Either a radio or a mah jongg set will work wonders and the combination of the both of them hasn’t never been known to fail. Ten-thirty is late enough to stay up and at that time you remark to the guest that you are going to bed be up by 6 so as the hired gal car get the beds made and catch the for Port Washington where she is golng to spend the day with her niece. Then you show the guest to his room which has previously been arranged for him by removing the bulb from the only electric light. For breakfast the next morning you serve him (1) No. 3 egg and & % cup of some good coffee substitute. It 1t happens to be Sunday you read him all the comical pictures out loud and then take him to church. Don’t make no mention of f0od o drink all day long and if the guest starts talking about them, just laugh it off. It takes & good game guest to stick 1t out 24 hrs. in the face of this kind of cordiality. The most of them makes their excuses long ere time for the evening meal and when they g0 they go for good. And as they genally always rush off to tell what happened to all the rest of your friends, why it Is very seldom nes-¥ sary to give the last named a course of the same treatment RING LARDNER. “NOW DAYS THE METHODS OF TORTURE IS MUCH SIMPLER."”