THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI
Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in
the light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just
outside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a
circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in
circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark. On the
bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and from the
deck of the schooner, across the slender ring of the atoll, the divers could
be seen at work. But the lagoon had no entrance for even a trading
schooner. With a favoring breeze cutters could win in through the tortuous
and shallow channel, but the schooners lay off and on outside and sent in
their small boats.
The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozen
brown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took the oars,
while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a young man garbed
in the tropic white that marks the European. The golden strain of
Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin and cast up golden
sheens and lights through the glimmering blue of his eyes. Raoul he was,
Alexandre Raoul, youngest son of Marie Raoul, the wealthy quarter-caste,
who owned and managed half a dozen trading schooners similar to the
Aorai. Across an eddy just outside the entrance, and in and through and
over a boiling tide-rip, the boat fought its way to the mirrored calm of the
lagoon. Young Raoul leaped out upon the white sand and shook hands
with a tall native. The man\'s chest and shoulders were magnificent, but the
stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh of which the age-whitened bone
projected several inches, attested the encounter with a shark that had put
an end to his diving days and made him a fawner and an intriguer for
small favors.