Some Pearls and a Swine by Cark Clausen

  Romance, October, 1920

  AINA LO, the shell-diver’s

  daughter, took from the shelf above

  M

  the hearth a heart-shaped pearl shell

  and a small leather sack. Placing the shell

  upon a low stool in the middle of the floor, she shook into it twelve small, gray seed-pearls

  from the sack and poured over them half a cup

  of coconut-oil from an earthen vessel. On her

  knees, her elbows resting on the edge of the

  stool, she pursed her lips and blew softly upon the surface of the oil.

  Her father watched her intently from

  his mat, peering over her shoulder with his

  watery, brine-blinded eyes, a broken stump of

  a clay pipe between his toothless gums. Old

  and decrepit was Aoku, the shell-diver. The

  icy clutch of twenty fathoms had squeezed the

  warm blood from his veins and left him a

  paralytic, helpless wreck, dependent upon the

  charity of the inhabitants and upon the bounty

  of the occasional traders whose schooners

  tarried in the lagoon for a few hours between

  the tides.

  “What see you in the shell, daughter?”

  he croaked, raising himself on palsied knees.

  Without answering, Maina lo

  continued blowing, until the funnel-shaped

  opening made in the oil by her breath touched

  the bottom of the shell and caused eleven of

  the twelve small pearls to arrange themselves

  in a circle about the base. The twelfth and

  largest stayed in the center of the circle and no amount of blowing could dislodge it.

  “A strange ship will enter the straits.”

  she answered, gazing into the shell with her

  face between her hands. “We shall have food,

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  2

  much food, my father. I see a very white sahib combination along the Straits of Malaita,

  with hair like the sun and eyes the color of

  where beauty and virtue rarely go hand in

  mother of pearl.”

  hand.

  “It is time,” Aoku mumbled. “Perhaps

  From her crown of glossy black hair to

  it is Perrot, the trader. He is free with his purse her finely-arched bare feet she was good to

  and he favors you.”

  look upon. Proud of bearing she was, high-

  “Perrot, the Frenchman, is a swine,”

  breasted as Venus, with the aristocratic blood

  she cried. “Sooner would I starve than eat

  of her race flowing undiluted in her veins.

  from his hand. Have you forgotten his perfidy

  She was proud of this blood. Upon the

  with other maidens? Aileta who leaped from

  free and easy unions between maidens of her

  the cliff and others?”

  race and the white masters she looked with

  Aoku shook his head and gazed at the

  scorn. Her mind, primitive, and untutored

  floor.

  though it was, grasped the significance of such

  “I am an old man,” he whined. “Soon I

  unions and their effect upon the destiny of her shall be gone. Have I not labored for you these race.

  many years? It is time you took a man.

  In a vague sort of a way she

  Among our own people not one finds favor

  understood that she and her people were

  with you. Then why spurn you this white

  inferior to the white man who seemed to

  trader who has much gold and fine houses?”

  possess everything in the world worth

  “The Frenchman is a swine,” Maina lo

  possessing. She wondered why. It seemed

  repeated. “Think you he would take me to

  unjust. Did she not love, hate, eat and drink as dwell as his wife? Not he! I am still a maid,

  they? Did not the sun smile on white and

  and a maid I remain until— until—” she brown alike, and the soft-trade winds, did not paused and patted her father’s wrinkled they kiss the graves of both races, impartially?

  cheek—“until my heart calls me.”

  The brown man toiled no longer at his

  “We shall starve,” Aoku whimpered.

  ancestral pursuits. Rum had left in him no

  “I am an old man—”

  desire for the old, simple life. Upon his

  “Rest easy, my father, I am young and

  women a new and sinister value had been

  strong. I can dive. Tomorrow I begin. Who

  placed, and he had sunk low enough to take

  knows but some day I may bring up a great

  advantage of it.

  pearl?”

  Maina lo pondered much upon these

  “But you are a woman,” he signs and hot hatred grew in her heart against remonstrated, “and good to look upon. The

  the white man and her debased brethren. Had

  men will laugh you to scorn.”

  she lived in New York instead of upon

  “Yes,” she said, slowly, “I am a Danrhyn atoll, she would have been an ardent woman—and good to look upon.”

  suffragette.

  She rose to her feet, poured the oil

  from the shell and replaced the twelve small

  AOKU’S boat, the Moonbeam, was the fastest pearls in the sack.

  and best equipped of the fleet. Crippled and

  A quiet serious-minded girl was Maina

  reduced though Aoku had become, he had

  lo, with rather heavy, sensuous lips and ever refused to part with it at any price.

  somber eyes that somehow suggested Originally the lifeboat of a merchantman, the slumbering passions. She had the respect of

  old diver had bought her for five pounds

  traders and natives alike, for she was a good

  sterling from the captain of the ship, who was

  girl. Also, she was beautiful, a rare anxious to use the deck-room which it

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  3

  displaced for stowing cargo. Aoku had coral reefs, while her father worked the great dragged the boat upon the beach, overhauled

  depths between the barrier reef and the

  her from stem to stern, decked her over with a

  mainland.

  deck of inch and a half baltic-pine and rigged

  Aoku had playfully taught his young

  her with a long slender mast, mainsail, topsail daughter the tricks of the trade, never

  and two jibs. Outside the South Pacific dreaming that some day he should become Trading Company’s lugger at Duralong—an

  dependent upon her for food and shelter.

  ex-yacht—no faster boat existed in the straits.

  There had been in his mind visions of their

  Before daybreak Maina lo hoisted triumphant return to their native Marquesas mainsail and jib and stood across the bar with

  with much gold, for the pearl-beds of the great a five-knot breeze long before the rest of the

  barrier reef were rich in the early days of the fleet had begun to stir. She headed for Little

  industry, but years had passed from plenty to

  Akaroa, a cove on the lee side of Duralong,

  scanty, from scanty to poverty, his body

  where diving was good on the slack tide. Once

  becomi
ng more useless and withered from

  clear of land, she set the tops’l, slacked out the month to month.

  main sheet and squared away before the wind.

  Maina lo grew into young womanhood

  The

  Moonbeam leaped in response to

  among the fleet, capable and earnest, always

  the increased pressure of sail and buried her

  learning, always inquiring, the ablest and most nose in the turbulent greenness under her bow.

  skillful sailor on the lagoon. The pilot at

  Maina lo hung upon the tiller and through the

  Duralong never ceased to relate how he

  flying spray watched the white-caps chase one

  watched her from the lighthouse drive the

  another in the wake astern, and her heart Moonbeam across the bar in a black leaped in exultation with the Moonbeam.

  northeaster at low tide with a double-reefed

  Here she was at home. A sister to the

  mains’l.

  north wind, she, racing down her ancestral

  With decks awash and the mainboom

  domain. Her long black hair lay coiled in two

  dragging in the trough of the seas, Maina lo

  heavy braids about her head. She had fastened

  rounded Point Miguel and nosed her way,

  the braids securely with shell-pins and raffia

  close-hauled, along the barrier reef, looking

  in preparation for the diving. A snug-fitting

  for a safe passage. The wind threw the boat on

  sleeveless tunic of woven raffia encased her

  her beam-ends under the heavy sail-pressure

  slender body from the armpits to the knees,

  and she was forced to furl the tops’l and outer giving her absolute freedom of movement, a

  jib.

  very necessary thing in twenty fathoms of

  So busy was she, dodging submerged

  water.

  reefs and taking in her high canvas, that she

  When the sun rose warm and dripping

  did not notice a bank of dark clouds rising

  from the eastern sea, she cast aside her with incredible swiftness out of the northern covering blanket. The warm wind raced sea. The first intimation she had of the through the loosely woven tunic and drove the

  approaching hurricane was, when looking

  blood dancing through her veins. Her cheeks

  across the straits, she saw an incoming bark

  were aflush with excitement for her new furl her canvas down to lower tops’ls and undertaking.

  square away to sea.

  Although it was no uncommon thing

  Through her glasses she made out the

  for women of her race to engage in pearl-

  bark to be the Pappillon, the French prison-diving, Maina lo had never descended more

  ship that for the past two years engaged in

  than a few fathoms among the shallows of the

  transferring prisoners from the penal colony of

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  4

  New Caledonia to Cayenne.

  up in the blackness ahead. She was utterly

  alone in the turbulent expanse of storm-

  ANXIOUSLY watching the oncoming cloud-

  whipped waters, hanging on the tiller with

  bank, she ran the boat into the wind, double-

  numb, nerveless hands.

  reefed the mains’l and set the storm-jib. There Then, the deluge. The heavens seemed

  was but one thing to do; follow the Pappillon to open their flood-gates. Howling, snarling,

  out to sea. To look for shelter along the reef

  raging came the icy, spume-laden downpour,

  was worse than useless. Swift as she worked,

  whipping the surface of the waters into a

  she had hardly tied the last knot in the reef

  veritable caldron of leaping fury. It beat upon when the hurricane burst upon her.

  her bare arms and legs with the sting of a lash So sudden and furious was the and drove the breath out of her body.

  onslaught that the boat was thrown on her

  The frail craft shuddered beneath the

  beam-ends with the storm-jib pounding in the

  weight of it and wallowed for minutes at the

  teeth of the gale, threatening momentarily to

  time, submerged to the bulwarks, only to rise

  dismast her. Maina lo leaped for the tiller and gallantly again, shake herself and leap forward threw all her weight against it, but with her

  on the crest of the next wave.

  deck buried amidships in storm-whipped

  Never for a moment did Maina lo’s

  water, the Moonbeam lost all steerageway and heart fail her. With numb, frozen hands she

  pounded head on into the seas. One after grasped the tiller in a grip of steel; guiding the another the reef-lashed waves raked the frail

  Moonbeam through the chaos of wind and craft from stem to stern. With her knees water. Even momentarily she did not relax her braced against the lee bulwarks, in water to

  vigilance. She looked upon the white,

  the waist, Maina lo hung on to the tiller in

  merciless death about her and smiled. The fear

  grim desperation, expecting momentarily to be

  of death was not in her. With blinded eyes she

  dashed to pieces upon a reef.

  strove to pierce the gloom ahead. So low hung

  Then

  gradually

  the

  Moonbeam paid the clouds that it seemed as if by reaching out off, righted herself and tore out to sea before her hand she might touch them.

  the hurricane in the two-mile wake of the

  Sun nor stars broke the inky pall, and

  Pappillon.

  the sea beneath was like a caldron of madly

  To prevent getting carried overboard,

  boiling milk, a great expanse of blinding

  she tied the main halyards around her waist

  whiteness. The hiss of the rain was drowned in

  and made the end fast to a ring-bolt in the

  the thundering noise of the waters pouring

  deck. In less than half an hour she was out of

  over the boat.

  sight of land, racing before the eighty-mile

  How long it lasted she could not have

  gale with the jib-sheet taut as a violin string told. When the squall passed on, she saw the

  and the hurricane howling in the rigging. Pappillon, a scant quarter of a mile ahead. Her Through the flying mist ahead she saw the

  rigging and white, slender spars stood drawn

  Pappillon’s lower tops’ls blow out in a shower against the blackness of the sky like a delicate, of shreds, leaving the bark running before the

  silver-threaded pattern upon a curtain of black wind with bare poles.

  velvet. She was laboring heavily without a

  The last of the young sun hung lurid

  stitch of canvas. A storm-torn signal of

  and ghostly behind the black clouds astern.

  distress fluttered from the mizzen gaff.

  Sky and water seemed to unite in a frenzy of

  With the cessation of the rain, the

  storm-lashed fury. A lone albatross swept waves began to rise. The sea changed in down the gale before her and was swallowed

  aspect. Great mountains of water lifted the

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  5

  Moonbeam toward the sky and flung her monstrously above her, her stern pointing forward with incredible speed. The little craft toward the sky. She was foundering by her

  plunged on, her head down green, head. Foc’sle-head and forward deck lay phosphorescent valleys of abysmal depth, engulfed to the fore-hatch. Crowsnests and climbed up the next wave bravely, only to
be

  rigging were crowded with human forms

  tossed as by some giant hand into the sky and

  awaiting the end. The fragments of two

  go coasting madly again.

  splintered lifeboats dragged in the water from

  With a deafening roar a great sea bore

  the tackle at her davits.

  down upon her. Maina lo set her teeth, flung

  Against the railing of the poop-deck a

  herself face down upon the deck and took a

  crowd of prisoners was lined up. Two sailors

  fresh turn about her waist with the halyards.

  with hammers and chisels were striking the

  For one breathless moment she waited with

  shackles from the unfortunate men across the

  the thunder of the oncoming waters in her

  iron hawser-bits. As fast as he was freed, each ears. The Moonbeam lay momentarily passive man leaped for the rigging.

  like a hunted stag awaiting the coup de grace.

  The bark was drifting helplessly before

  Then with a last brave attempt to meet

  the gale. With her forward hold half-full of

  the onslaught, she staggered into the water she staggered drunkenly to her grave.

  thundering death. The tiller snapped in Maina

  Curious, incredulous faces stared down at the

  lo’s hand like a piece of matchwood. With

  frail craft with the lone half-nude figure of a terrific force she was hurled against the mast, girl standing upright in the stern, guiding the the waist-rope almost cutting her in twain by

  boat with only an oar. A sailor in the mizzen