Suddenly Caroline of the Marquesas and Mamoe of Moorea, most beautiful dancers of the quays, flung themselves into the upaupahura, the singing dance of love.  Kelly began “Tome!  Tome!” a Hawaiian hula.  Men unloading cargo on the many schooners dropped their burdens and began to dance.  Rude squareheads of the fo’c’sles beat time with pannikins.  Clerks in the traders’ stores and even Marechel, the barber, were swept from counters and chairs by the sensuous melody, and bareheaded in the white sun they danced beneath the crowded balconies of the Cercle Bougainville, the club by the lagoon.  The harbor of Papeite knew ten minutes of unrestrained merriment, tears forgotten, while from the warehouse of the navy to the Poodle Stew cafe the hula reigned.

[Illustration:  Beach at Viataphiha-Tahiti]

[Illustration:  Where the belles of Tahiti lived in the shade to whiten their complexions.]

Under the gorgeous flamboyant trees that paved their shade with red-gold blossoms a group of white men sang: 

“Well, ah fare you well, we can stay no more with you, my love,
Down, set down your liquor and the girl from off your knee,
For the wind has come to say
’You must take me while you may,
If you’d go to Mother Carey!’
(Walk her down to Mother Carey!)
Oh, we’re bound for Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at sea!”

The anchor was up, the lines let go, and suddenly from the sea came a wind with rain.

The girls from the Cocoanut House, a flutter of brilliant scarlet and pink gowns, fled for shelter, tossing blossoms of the sweet tiati Tahiti toward their sailor lovers as they ran.  Marao, the haughty queen, drove rapidly away in her old chaise, the Princess Boots leaning out to wave a slender hand.  Prince Hinoi, the fat spendthrift who might have been a king, leaned from the balcony of the club, glass in hand, and shouted, “Aroha i te revaraa!” across the deserted beach.

So we left Papeite, the gay Tahitian capital, while a slashing downpour drowned the gay flamboyant blossoms, our masts and rigging creaking in the gale, and sea breaking white on the coral reef.

Like the weeping women, who doubtless had already dried their tears, the sky began to smile before we reached the treacherous pass in the outer reef.  Beyond Moto Utu, the tiny islet in the harbor that had been harem and fort in kingly days, we saw the surf foaming on the coral, and soon were through the narrow channel.

We had lifted no canvas in the lagoon, using only our engine to escape the coral traps.  Past the ever-present danger, with the wind now half a gale and the rain falling again in sheets—­the intermittent deluge of the season—­the Morning Star, under reefed foresail, mainsail and staysail, pointed her delicate nose toward the Dangerous Islands and hit hard the open sea.

She rode the endlessly-tossing waves like a sea-gull, carrying her head with a care-free air and dipping to the waves in jaunty fashion.  Her lines were very fine, tapering and beautiful, even to the eye of a land-lubber.