My visit was obviously a great event in the eyes of Mrs. Seventh Man Who Is So Angry He Wallows In The Mire.  A laughing Juno of thirty years, large and rounded as a breadfruit-tree, more than six feet in height, with a mass of blue-black hair and teeth that flashed white as a fresh-opened cocoanut, she rose from her mat on the paepae and rubbed my nose ceremoniously with hers.  Clothed in a necklace of false pearls and a brilliantly scarlet loincloth, she was truly a barbaric figure, yet in her eye I beheld that instant preoccupation with household matters that greets the unexpected guest the world over.

While the chief and I reclined upon mats and Exploding Eggs sat vigilant at my side, she vanished into the house, and shortly returned to set before us a bowl of popoi and several cocoanuts.  These we ate while Neo discoursed sadly upon the evil times that had befallen his reign.

“Me very busy when prenty ship come,” he mourned.  “Me fix for wood; get seven dollar load.  Me fix for girl for captain and mate.  Me stay ship, eat hard-tackee, salt horsee, chew tobacco, drink rum.  Good time he all dead.”

The repast ended, we set out to view the depleted village with its few inhabitants, the remainder after Europe had subtracted native habits and native health.

The gorge that parted the valley was wide and deep for the silver stream that sang its way to the bay.  When the rain fell in cascades the channel hardly contained the mad torrent that raced from the heights, a torrent that had destroyed the road built years before when whaler’s ships by the dozens came each year.  Now the natives made their way as of old, up and down rocky trails and over the stepping-stones.

Near the beach we came upon a group of tumbledown shanties, remnants of the seat of government.  Only a thatched schoolhouse and a tiny cabin for the teacher were habitable.  Here the single artist of the islands, Monsieur Charles Le Moine, had taught the three “R’s” to Vait-hua’s adolescents for years.  He was away now, Neo said, but we found his cabin open and littered with canvases, sketches, paint-tubes, and worn household articles.

“He got litt’ee broomee, an’ sweep paint out litt’ee pipe on thing make ship’s sails,” Neo explained.  Surely a description of a broad modern style.

On the wall or leaning against it on the floor were a dozen drawings and oils of a young girl of startling beauty.  Laughing, clear-eyed, she seemed almost to speak from the canvas, filling the room with charm.  Here she leaned against a palm-trunk, her bare brown body warm against its gray; there she stood on a white beach, a crimson pareu about her loins and hibiscus flowers in her hair.

“That Hinatini,” said Seventh Man Who Wallows, speaking always in what he supposed to be English.  “She some pumkin, eh?  Le Moine like more better make tiki like this than say book.  She my niece.”