Then the cook closed the galley door for the night and, stepping softly into the fo’c’sle, plumped down a large jar of the best Jamaica rum on Hans’ sea-chest. It was a present from the bed-ridden skipper; and, as the old salts slowly opened their mouths and in one melancholy gulp gave a sad toast to the memory of Moses’ soul, I once more seemed to be voyaging across the seas of some far-off age. I heard the melodies of the winds wailing aloft in the grey sails that swayed along under the stars. And, somehow, I felt the touch of the sea’s old sorrow and romance blow across the deck. The moonlight was falling in an eerie way through the spread canvas and wavering ghostly-wise on the deck just by the fo’c’sle doorway. Again I felt that visionary presence, as it rustled like a richly melancholy-scented wind along the deck, a something that my senses could not place. I felt it creep into the fo’c’sle, sending its shifting fingers tenderly over the bowed heads of those old-time sailormen, who mourned the loss of Moses, the one who had instinctively loved them all, through knowing the hidden virtue of their hearts.
When we arrived off Papeete, we seemed to have dropped anchor in some celestial harbour of a world beyond the stars. Dotted about along the shore, under the waveless coco-palms, were tiny, yellow wickerwork, bamboo huts. The sun was setting. It was a sight to please the most unpoetical being, as dusky figures, clad in tappa-cloth and sashes of gorgeous hues, flitted under the banyan groves. The far-away background of that island world looked like some vast canvas daub, some tremendous transcendent silence lit up by a liquid setting sun. The mountain ranges of Orehena, visible for miles, resembled some old chaos of unhewn creation stuffed, piled up, overgrown with forests, and encircled by the distant blue pigment of the ocean skyline. But the savage children of Adam and Eve were there right enough. Fleets of outrigger canoes were being paddled out by the primitive peoples who had sighted the “Zangwahee.” Those canoes were the Tahitians’ tiny argosies, and were crammed with sweet-scented merchandise, coco-nuts, limes, softly-tinted shells, corals, and luscious fruits. Those merchants of the south clambered up the vessel’s side, rushed about the decks gabbling in a musical tongue that was the more fascinating through being strange to our ears. Some were in such haste that they dived from their canoes into the sea, and, leaping on deck, looked like bronzed mermen as they shook themselves. The water glistened from their lime-dyed locks and ran down their handsome figures. “Yarana!” was their oft-reiterated salutation. It was hard to tell which were the most attractive, the pretty maids with hibiscus blossoms in their curly hair, or the handsome terra-cotta-coloured youths. Whilst the hubbub and general pandemonium of those pretty merchants were in full swing, old Hans, Olwyn, Steffan, Olaf, and the rest of the old salts walked solemnly out of the forecastle, hired a twelve-seated outrigger from the natives, and were immediately paddled ashore.