________________________________________________
_ I suppose the next three years were the happiest of
Strickland's life. Ata's house stood about eight kilometres
from the road that runs round the island, and you went to it
along a winding pathway shaded by the luxuriant trees of the
tropics. It was a bungalow of unpainted wood, consisting of
two small rooms, and outside was a small shed that served as a
kitchen. There was no furniture except the mats they used as
beds, and a rocking-chair, which stood on the verandah.
Bananas with their great ragged leaves, like the tattered
habiliments of an empress in adversity, grew close up to the house.
There was a tree just behind which bore alligator pears,
and all about were the cocoa-nuts which gave the land
its revenue. Ata's father had planted crotons round his property,
and they grew in coloured profusion, gay and brilliant;
they fenced the land with flame. A mango grew in front
of the house, and at the edge of the clearing were two
flamboyants, twin trees, that challenged the gold of the
cocoa-nuts with their scarlet flowers.
Here Strickland lived, coming seldom to Papeete, on the
produce of the land. There was a little stream that ran not
far away, in which he bathed, and down this on occasion would
come a shoal of fish. Then the natives would assemble with spears,
and with much shouting would transfix the great startled
things as they hurried down to the sea. Sometimes Strickland
would go down to the reef, and come back with a basket
of small, coloured fish that Ata would fry in cocoa-nut oil,
or with a lobster; and sometimes she would make a savoury
dish of the great land-crabs that scuttled away under your feet.
Up the mountain were wild-orange trees, and now and
then Ata would go with two or three women from the village and
return laden with the green, sweet, luscious fruit. Then the
cocoa-nuts would be ripe for picking, and her cousins (like
all the natives, Ata had a host of relatives) would swarm up
the trees and throw down the big ripe nuts. They split them
open and put them in the sun to dry. Then they cut out the
copra and put it into sacks, and the women would carry it down
to the trader at the village by the lagoon, and he would give
in exchange for it rice and soap and tinned meat and a little money.
Sometimes there would be a feast in the neighbourhood,
and a pig would be killed. Then they would go and eat
themselves sick, and dance, and sing hymns.
But the house was a long way from the village, and the
Tahitians are lazy. They love to travel and they love to
gossip, but they do not care to walk, and for weeks at a time
Strickland and Ata lived alone. He painted and he read, and
in the evening, when it was dark, they sat together on the
verandah, smoking and looking at the night. Then Ata had a
baby, and the old woman who came up to help her through her
trouble stayed on. Presently the granddaughter of the old
woman came to stay with her, and then a youth appeared -- no
one quite knew where from or to whom he belonged -- but he
settled down with them in a happy-go-lucky way, and they all
lived together, _
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