James Norman Hall - The Hurricane (Charles Bernard Nordhoff, James Norman Hall) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

“Never,” he replied. “I’ve not had the slightest desire to return to Europe. It’s not easy to explain. You’ll grant that a satisfactory life must be based on reality? Well, I find reality here.”

“Reality!” exclaimed the younger man. “When we leave this place I shall find it hard to believe that the island exists at all! I scarcely know why, but even more than Africa this disquiets me, puts me on the defensive. On such crumbs of land man seems so helpless—so hopelessly, microscopically small. Tropical jungles are bad enough, but Nature typified by such an ocean . . . it is too powerful. It numbs the imagination.”

“But Nature is powerful, my dear Vernier! I know: we try to forget it, and at home, where we herd together, thousands to the square mile, we very nearly succeed. But all our efforts to thwart her, to harness her, must come to nothing in the end.”

“You believe, then, that our science will get us nowhere; that we shall never emancipate ourselves; that progress is an illusion, in short?”

“Progress aims at a steadily increasing security. I’m not saying that it is not a worthy end to strive toward, but think what we lose in the pursuit of it! And security is not enough; far from it! The people of these islands have been taught better. They live in the present, enjoying the simple occurrences of each day as it comes. They waste little time in planning for the future, for at any moment Nature may decide to take a hand. And they are happy, I think.”

“I hope so,” said Vernier with a wry smile. “Certainly, you should be a good judge of that. You must know these people as few outsiders do.”

“I like them, at least, and speak their language. Situated as I am, with almost no intercourse with the outer world, one comes to take great interest in simple things: the happenings of village life, the little tragedies and comedies that develop here as well as elsewhere. In Polynesia, a doctor is a privileged person even more than at home; everyone, from the children to the great-grandparents, open their hearts to him. I divert myself by looking on, by listening to all that they tell me, until I can piece together each small drama, complete from beginning to end.”

“Theirs is existence reduced to its simplest terms, I should think.”

“So it is, and we Frenchmen are supposed to care little for life stripped down to the essentials. I may be eccentric in this respect, but I find it unfailingly refreshing. I am no believer in the noble savage of Jean Jacques, yet to my mind there is an elemental fineness in lives like these, free from the petty concerns that debase our lives at home. Greed, parsimony, avarice, scarcely exist among them. Thrift, which we elevate to a virtue, is a term of ridicule here. A virtue? This acquisitive storing up for the future which the peasant shares with the squirrel?”

“Have a care, Doctor!” Vernier put in with a good-humored laugh. “I shall begin to doubt you a fellow countryman.”

“Don’t take an elderly crank too seriously. I have changed, no doubt of it, but I fancy the war had more to do with that than the atolls.”

He paused. “Are you sleepy?” he asked, presently.

“Not in the least.”

“I’ve a mind to give you a glimpse of your new province in advance. In my mail, at Atuona, I found a letter informing me that Madame de Laage was dead. She was a remarkable woman; I had the greatest respect for her. Save myself, she was the last surviving European who played a part in a series of events in which I took deep interest. Would you care to hear the story?”

“I’d like nothing better.”

“It concerns the hurricane which desolated Manukura, but bound up with that was a most unusual little drama which came under my own observation. You will understand that I didn’t gather the details all at once, but before I was done, I knew everything that had happened, and, I imagine, very nearly as it occurred. The situation, like most of our troubles and perplexities, was man-made, but Nature furnished the solution in the end. Very well, then:—”

This schooner was built just before the war. The people of Manukura took an almost proprietary interest in her, for her frames and knees of tohonu wood were cut out by them to Captain Nagle’s order, and freighted, by cutter, to the shipyard at Tahiti. A remarkable wood, tohonu; it grows only on the Low Islands, and the scent of it when freshly sawn attracts butterflies for miles around. It is proof against dry rot, and grows harder and harder with age. It is twenty-one years since the Katopua was launched, and so far as her frames go, she is good for fifty more. At any rate, she has outlasted her skipper.

Nagle was an Englishman. He came out here in early youth, one of those unusual men who succeed in eradicating all traces of nationality. He spoke French fluently, though with a strong twang of the Midi. His compatriots supposed him an American, and Americans, an Englishman. Hearing his voice on deck, on a dark night, the natives of neighboring groups had more than once mistaken him for a Tuamotu man. His seamanship, more than his appearance or speech, proclaimed his English birth.

He began his career as cook on a brig belonging to the Maison Brander, trading to the west coast of South America, in the days when Chile dollars circulated all through this part of the world. Cook, sailor, quartermaster, mate, captain—he climbed the steps easily. He had resolved to own and operate his own vessel in the Tuamotu, and his schooner, when finally launched, represented the savings of more than twenty-five years at sea.

Like every skipper in these parts, he had a favorite island where he enjoyed a monopoly of trade, and to which he hoped to retire some day. The people of Manukura regarded Captain Nagle as one of themselves. Twice each year, with a regularity that never failed, the Katopua sailed into the lagoon, bringing flour, rice, tobacco, tinned beef, prints, cutlery, and other things for Tavi’s store, and loading the one hundred tons of copra bagged and waiting for him in the sheds by the landing place. Nagle’s memory was remarkable. He knew everyone on the island, children included: what woman was expecting a baby; which child was to be confirmed at the church; what people had relatives on other islands, and the relationship between them. He was given innumerable commissions each time he sailed, and these, no matter how small, he would execute faithfully, without profit to himself. He would match a yard of lace for a grandmother or buy a particular color of ribbon in the Papeete shops for one of the girls. In return for his many services, there was nothing within the people’s power to give that Nagle might not have had for the asking.

It was natural that a Manukura crew should man the schooner. Like all Low Islanders, they made splendid seamen, once they got the hang of the ropes and compass. The best of the lot was Terangi, a lad of sixteen when Nagle took him aboard a few weeks before Germany declared war.

The men of the Tuamotu were not conscripted for service overseas, but the blood of warlike chiefs flowed in Terangi’s veins, and once he had visited Tahiti and seen the drilling and departure of the troops, all the captain’s influence was needed to prevent the lad from volunteering. Young as he was, he was well grown and strong beyond his years; he might have passed anywhere for eighteen or nineteen. The boy was of a type occasionally to be found among the ariki class: thin-lipped and aquiline in feature, and as courageous and trustworthy as he was good-natured.

Nagle had long known Terangi’s mother, Mama Rua, a widow whose other children had scattered to distant islands, which is often the case in the Tuamotu, for the people are careful about inbreeding. He had had many a talk with the slender gray-haired woman and had opened his mind to her as to his hopes for Terangi. He would take the lad to sea, teach him his trade, and turn over the schooner and the business to him when he himself was ready to retire. The boy, of course, was told nothing of all this. Like others, he went to sea when he was old enough, and it struck him as natural that a portion of the ancestral land should be allotted to the captain, who would some day build a house upon it and live there.