CHAPTER I

It was a song that never before had been sung; once sung, never again
would it be heard. Such a song, indeed, as little girls croon to their
dolls; half funeral chant, half hymn, sung in a minor key by a girl with
a powerfully sweet lyric soprano. The last of the land breeze carried it
aft to Gaston Larrieau, the master of the 200-ton auxiliary trading
schooner Moorea, where he stood on the top step of the companion, his
leonine head and tremendous shoulders showing above the deck-house, as
he smoked his first after-breakfast pipe.

While he listened, a shadow passed over the man’s face, as when winds
drive a dark cloud above a sunny plain. He removed his pipe thoughtfully
to murmur:

“Ah, my poor Tamea! Dear child of the sun! Homesick already!” Then he
came out on deck and stood by the weather rail, looking forward until he
espied the figure of the singer stretched face downward, at full length,
alongside the bowsprit, but snuggled comfortably in the belly of the
jib. One arm enveloped the bowsprit; at each rise and fall of the
Moorea’s long clipper bow, her feet, sandal-clad, beat the canvas in
rhythm. And, because she was young and athrill with the music of the
spheres, because the dark blue water purling under the schooner’s
forefoot brought to her memories of the insistent, peaceful swish of the
surf enveloping the outer reef at Riva, the girl Tamea sang:

“Behold! Tamea, Queen of Riva,
Has forsaken her mother’s people.
In her father’s great canoe called Moorea
After the mother of Tamea, who loved him,
Tamea sails over a cold sea
To the white man’s country.
Tamea is happy and curious.
But if the hearts in this new land
Are cold as the fog this morning,
Then will the heart of Tamea grow heavy.
Then will she weep for a sight of Riva.
Then will she yearn for love and pleasure,
For dancing and feasting; for the water
White on the reef where the fishermen stand . . .”

“I must shake her out of that mood,” Larrieau muttered, and strode aft
to the wheel. The Tahitian helmsman gave way to him and as the master
put the helm down and the schooner came sharply up into the wind and
hung there shivering her canvas until it cracked like pistol shots,
Tamea rose briskly from her hammock in the belly of the jib and stood
poised on the bowsprit, with one hand clasping the jib to steady her.
The suddenness with which she had been disturbed and the air of regal
hauteur she assumed as she faced aft for an explanation from the
Tahitian helmsman, who had now resumed the wheel and was easing the
Moorea away on her course once more, brought a bellow of Brobdingnagian
laughter from Larrieau.

Tamea came aft with stately tread, pausing at the forward end of the
deck-house. “So it was you, great, wicked Frenchman,” she cried in a
Polynesian dialect. “Truly, my father forgets that he is but a wandering
trader, while I am Tamea, Queen of Riva!” Simulating a royal fury she
was far from feeling, Tamea grasped a bucket attached to a rope, dropped
it overboard, drew it back filled with water and, poising it in position
to hurl its contents, advanced to the assault.

“_Tiens!_” Gaston Larrieau chuckled. “I shall never succeed in making a
Christian of you. It is written that even a queen shall honor her father
and mother? nevertheless you, my own child, would dishonor me with sea
water!” As she threatened him laughingly, he leaped for the opposite
corner of the deck-house, and she saw that it was his humor to invite
the deluge. Wherefore, with the perversity of her sex and royal blood,
she deluged the helmsman, who stood grinning at her.

“Your eye belongs on the lubber’s mark, on the sails, on the
horizon—anywhere but on me, Kahanaha,” she admonished the amazed
fellow. And then, while Gaston Larrieau, momentarily off guard, stood
roaring great gales of laughter at the discomfited Kahanaha, Queen Tamea
of Riva dashed into his face fully a quart of water remaining in the
bucket. She smiled upon Larrieau adorably.

“He laughs best who laughs last. Kahanaha, you may laugh.”

Larrieau dashed the water from his bush of a beard. “_Nom d’un chien!_
This is mutiny. Tamea, come here!” But Tamea merely wrinkled her nose at
him, and when he charged at her she cried aloud, half delighted, half
deliciously apprehensive, and started up the starboard main shrouds. Her
father followed her, moving, despite his sixty years and his tremendous
bulk, with something of the ease and swiftness of a bear.

At the masthead Tamea cowered, pretending to be frightened and cornered,
until his hand reached for her slim ankle; when without the slightest
hesitation she sprang for the backstay and went whizzing swiftly down to
the deck. Here she threw him a peace offering, in the way of a kiss, but
he ignored her. From the masthead he was looking out over the low-lying
smear of fog that shrouded the coast of California, and the girl
thrilled as his stentorian voice rang through the ship.

“Land, ho!”

Within a few minutes the Moorea had slipped through the cordon of fog
into the sunshine. Off to starboard the red hull of the lightship loomed
vividly against the blue of sea and sky; a white pilot schooner ratched
lazily across their bows, while off to port three gasoline trawlers out
of San Francisco coughed violently away toward the Cordelia banks, their
hulls painted in bizarre effects of Mediterranean blue with yellow decks
and upper works. Their Sicilian crews waved tassled, multicolored
tam-o’-shanter caps at Tamea and when she threw kisses to them with both
hands they shouted their approval in ringing fashion.

From Point San Pedro on the south to Point Reyes on the north fifty
miles of green, mountainous shore line sweeping down abruptly to
ocher-tinted bluffs lay outspread before Tamea. She viewed it with mixed
feelings of awe, delight and a half sensed feeling of apprehension, for
all that enthralling vision impressed her with the thought that beyond
the indentation which her father called to her was the Golden Gate, lay
another world of romance, of dreams, curiosity-compelling, palpitant
with something of the same warmth that had nurtured Tamea in the little
known, seldom visited and uncharted island kingdom under the Southern
Cross. Following the fashion of her people when their emotions are
profoundly stirred, again Tamea’s golden voice was lifted in a
semi-chant, an improvised pæan of appreciation.

Down through the entrance the Moorea ramped, with Tamea standing far out
on the bowsprit, as if she would be the first to arrive, the first to
see the wonders she felt certain lurked just around the bend behind
crumbling old Fort Winfield Scott. As she leaned against the jib stay
and held on with her elbows she searched the shore line with her
father’s marine glasses until, the Moorea having loafed up to the
quarantine grounds, the crew disturbed the girl in order to take in the
headsails.

They were scarcely snugged down before the Customs tug scraped
alongside. While Gaston was down below in the cabin presenting his
papers for the inspection of the port officer, a representative of the
Public Health Service examined the crew on deck. Before Tamea he stood
several moments in silent admiration. Then he asked:

“Miss, do you speak English?”

Tamea looked him over with frank admiration and approval. “You bet your
sweet life I speak English,” she replied melodiously; and from her
English the doctor knew that she also spoke French. Having heard her
giving an order to the Kanaka steward in an alien tongue, he concluded
she spoke Hawaiian and sought confirmation of that conclusion.

“No, mister, I do not speak Hawaiian,” said Tamea. “I can understand
much of it, because all Polynesian languages are derived from the same
Aryan source. The difference between the hundreds of languages in
Polynesia is mostly one of dialect—phonetic differences, you know.”

He sighed. “I didn’t know, but I’m glad to find out—from you. Are you
Venus or Juno or one of the Valkyries from some tropical Valhalla?”

“Now you grow very queer,” she retorted soberly. “You make the josh, and
I do not like men who do that. I am Tamea Oluolu Larrieau. I am the
Queen of Riva, and in Riva it is taboo to josh the Queen.”

“I think the Queen is a josher, however,” he replied gravely.

“Ah! You do not believe, then, that I am the Queen of Riva?”

“No, I do not. You’re the Queen of Hearts.”

Fortunately for Tamea she knew how to play casino and was, therefore,
acquainted with the queen of hearts. Hence she could assimilate the
compliment, and a ravishing smile was the reward of the daring doctor.

He bowed low.

“Will Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, Queen of Riva—wherever that may be, if it
isn’t another name for Paradise, since an houri has come from
Riva—oblige a mere mortal by opening her mouth, sticking out her tongue
and saying, ‘_Ah-h-h!_’—like that.”

“Why?” There was suspicion in Tamea’s glance now.

“It is a ceremonial peculiar to this country, Your Majesty. It is
required of all visitors, of whatever rank. An Indian prince did it
yesterday and a _dato_ from Java will do it this afternoon.”

Tamea shrugged—a Gallic shrug—and complied.

“What a lovely death it would be to be fatally bitten by those teeth!
Now, just one more ceremonial, if you please. It is required that I
shall look into your eyes very closely. You may have trachoma, but if
you have I’ll never survive the shock of having to deport you.”

Again Tamea shrugged. A peculiar custom, she thought, but one that was
not difficult to comply with.

“Well, if you’re a fair sample of the womanhood of Riva, O Tamea Oluolu
Larrieau, I’m mighty glad that I’m not a practicing physician there. I
should never earn a fee.”

“And if you should earn a fee nobody would think of paying it,” she
laughed. “Perhaps, if you liked bananas or coconuts——” And her
shoulders came up in collaboration, as it were, with an adorable little
_moue_. The young doctor laughed happily.

“Alas! God help the poor missionaries with sirens like her on every
hand,” he thought as he descended into the cabin, where Larrieau was in
conference with an immigration official touching his daughter’s right to
land. This detail was, happily, quickly passed and the health officer
tapped Gaston Larrieau on the arm.

“Captain, it will be necessary for me to give you a physical examination
before I can issue your vessel a clean bill of health.”

“Open your mouth and say, ‘_Ah-h-h!_’” commanded Tamea, who had followed
the doctor below. “Then open your eyes and look wise. Is my father not a
frail little man, eh?” she demanded of the doctor.

“The examination of this physical wreck is merely a matter of routine,
Your Majesty.”

Gaston Larrieau; came close to the doctor and opened his cavernous
mouth.

“_Ah-h-h!_” he said.

“Ah!” the doctor repeated softly—and touched lightly, in succession, a
slightly puffed spot high up on each of the captain’s cheeks. As he
pressed the color fled, leaving a somewhat sickly whitish spot that
stood out prominently in an otherwise ruddy face. A moment later the
spots in question had regained their original color, which had been a
ruddiness somewhat less pronounced than the surrounding tissue.

Perhaps only a doctor’s eye—an eye especially alert for such
spots—would have detected them.

“Is this not a fine doctor, father Larrieau!” Tamea exclaimed almost
breathlessly. “You open your mouth—and he looks at your eyes!”

The health officer glanced at her. A minute before he had noted
particularly the glory of her complexion—pale gold, with an old-rose
tint, very faintly diffused through the clear skin, like a yellow light
masked by a pale pink silk cloth. Now the rose tint was gone and old
ivory had replaced the pale gold. There was a gleam of excitement, of
fear, in her smoky eyes, and the smile which accompanied her attempted
badinage was just a bit forced. As the glances of the two met each
realized that the other _knew_!

“I cannot help it; I must do my duty,” the doctor murmured helplessly,
and turned to look down Gaston Larrieau’s open throat. “Any soreness in
the nose, Captain?”

“A little, of late, Doctor.”

“Any other pain?”

“Well, for a couple of months I’ve had a small, steady pain in my right
shoulder—like rheumatism.”

“No. It is neuritis.” He picked up the captain’s ham-like hand and noted
on the back of it, close to the knuckles, the same faintly white, puffy
spots. “Now please remove your shirt.”

Tamea’s eyes closed in momentary pain before she retired to a stateroom
adjoining the main cabin. Larrieau removed his shirt and the doctor
examined his torso critically. On his back, partially covering the right
scapula, he found that which he sought. “That will be all,” he informed
Larrieau. “Replace your garments.”

An assistant poured some disinfectant on his hands and he washed them
vigorously in it, wiping them on a handkerchief which he tossed
overboard through a porthole. At a sign from the doctor the others went
on deck.

He lighted a cigarette and when Larrieau faced him inquiringly he said:

“Now, regarding your daughter, Captain. What are your plans for her?”

“I have brought her up to San Francisco to place her in a convent to
complete her education. As you have observed, she speaks English very
well, but with a very slight French accent. She has had some schooling
in English, but not very much.”

“Her mother, I take it, is a Polynesian.”

“Pure-bred Polynesian. She died a year ago, during the influenza
epidemic.”

“Forgive me, Captain, if my questions appear impertinent. They are not,
strictly speaking, questions which I should ask you, but under the
circumstances the immigration officer has left the asking of them to me.
Have you or your daughter any friends or relatives in this country?”

“We have no relatives, Monsieur Doctor, and the only friends I have in
this country are my owners.”

“Is your financial situation such that, should you be taken away from
your daughter, she would be provided for to the extent that she would
not be likely to become a public charge?”

Gaston Larrieau smiled. “And you ask that of a Frenchman, to whom thrift
is a virtue? I have not traded among the South Pacific islands more than
thirty-five years to come away without the price of a peaceful old age.
I am worth a quarter of a million dollars, and with the exception of a
few pearls and a quarter interest in this vessel, all of my fortune is
in cash.”

“Did you plan to return to the Islands after placing your child in
school here?”

“_Parbleu_, no! No one could manage Tamea without my help. I am finished
with the sea. All of my interests and those of Tamea in the South have
been sold. Two years hence, when Tamea has grown used to civilized
customs, we will return to France—to Brittany, where I was born.”

“Tamea will probably marry well in France,” the doctor suggested.

“Yes. We Frenchmen are more democratic than Americans or the English in
our choice of wives. The fact that my Tamea is half Polynesian—ah, they
would not forget that, though she is more wonderful than a white girl! I
was married to her mother,” he added, as if he suspected the doctor
might secretly be questioning that point. “We were married by the
mission priest in Nukahiva.”

The doctor finished his cigarette and suddenly hurled the butt through
the porthole. “Lord!” he growled. “I’m so tired of breaking people’s
hearts and shattering their hopes.”

“Eh? What is that? Have you, then, unpleasant news for me?”

The doctor nodded gravely. “Captain, I have very unpleasant news for
you. Dreadful news, in fact. While I hesitate to state so absolutely
until a microscopic examination has been made and the presence of the
bacillus in your body determined beyond question, I am morally certain
that you have contracted—leprosy!”

The master of the Moorea met the terrible blow as a ship meets an
unexpected squall. He flinched and trembled for a moment, then righted
himself. His wind-and-sun-bitten face and neck went greenish white; his
eyes closed for perhaps ten seconds; his shoulders sagged and his great
breast heaved with a single sigh. In those ten seconds old age appeared
to have touched him for the first time. When his eyes opened again he
was the same calm, good-natured, almost boyish man who had romped
through the rigging of the Moorea with his child that morning. He smiled
a little sadly—and shrugged.

“Well, that’s over,” he murmured. “I am very sorry for you, Doctor.
These things are very unpleasant. However, I have no regrets. I have
enjoyed my life—down yonder—because nothing matters. There are not
many rules and regulations—and we ignore them.”

“It is different here.”

“Alas, yes!”

“You are a naturalized citizen of the United States?”

“Yes, Monsieur Doctor.”

“It is my duty to remove you from this schooner to the quarantine
station at Angel Island. You will be held there for observation, and
when the fact that you are a leper is officially determined, you will be
removed to the Isolation Hospital in San Francisco. However, it might be
arranged to have you sent to the colony at Molokai. If you were not a
citizen of the United States you would be deported to the country of
which you are a subject.”

“We have said good-by to Riva and the South, and we are not going back.
The white blood predominates in my girl; I want her to live her life
among white men and women. Besides, she can afford it. She may marry
some fine fellow here. Who knows? I had picked on Brittany for my old
age—so Molokai will not do. _Bon dieu!_ I should have such ennui in
Molokai. I could not stand that.”

“Rules and regulations, Captain,” the doctor reminded him
sympathetically.

Gaston Larrieau shook his head. “Old Gaston of the Beard caged like a
pet monkey, eh? I think not.” He sat down and tugged at his beard
thoughtfully. “Well, one thing is certain,” he continued. “It is more
than seventeen years since I begot Tamea. I was clean then and for all
the years since until this morning.”

“Non-leprous children are born of leprous parents, Captain. Tamea is
clean.”

“She must not know that I am not.”

“Ah, but she does know it.”

Larrieau sprang erect, terrible. “You dared to tell her——” he roared,
and advanced with upraised hand.

“Sit down. The girl has eyes, and in Riva she has, doubtless, seen more
than one leper. I told her nothing. Listen, Captain.”

From the stateroom came the sound of a muffled sob.

Larrieau sat down, dumb and distressed. “Yes, there is leprosy in Riva.
And tuberculosis and worse. The scourges of our white civilization are
creeping in and where they strike there is no hope. So I brought Tamea
away—only to be stricken—— Well, I knew that was one of the risks I
had to take, and a life without risks is as an egg without salt. In my
day I have adventured in strange and terrible places, and while this is
the very devil of a joke to have fate play on me, still”—he shrugged
again—“I have lived my life and I have loved my love, and by the blood
of the devil, life owes me nothing. I am ready! _Voilà!_” And the Triton
snapped his fingers. “I am no mealy-mouthed clerk to go whimpering to my
finish, protesting at the last that my heart is breaking with sorrow for
my sins.” He laughed his mellow, resonant, roaring laugh.

“No, no. Old Gaston of the Beard has enjoyed his sins. They were not
many, for I was ever a simple man, but such sins as I had—ah, they were
magnificent! I have children in a hundred islands. But Tamea is the
child of my love, and like her mother she is a glorious pagan.”

“You say her mother is dead.”

Gaston of the Beard nodded. “She was a queen and believed herself
descended from her Polynesian gods. Damnation! She had every right to,
for she was a goddess. Tall, Monsieur Doctor—six feet, for she came of
a race of hereditary rulers and in Polynesia before the white men came
to ruin and degenerate these children of nature, a king was not a king
in very truth unless, standing among his people, he could gaze over
their heads as one gazes over a wheat field from the top rail of a
fence. Tamea’s great-great-grandfather was deposed and exiled to an
island five hundred miles to the west, where his enemies enslaved him.
In his old age his people rescued him and offered him the scepter he had
lost in his youth. But he would not accept, for age and toil had crooked
his back and he could no longer stand head and shoulders over his
people.”

“What a magnificent old chap he must have been, Captain!” said the
doctor.

Larrieau nodded. “Tamea’s mother, Moorea, could walk! You, my young
friend, have never seen a woman walk; it is a lost art; our women mince
or hop or strut. Moorea was a beautiful woman in point of features. Her
hair was a wonderful seal-brown and her skin—well, her skin——”

“Was Tamea’s,” the doctor interrupted.

Gaston of the Beard smiled and nodded. “She was regal of bearing and
regal of soul—and the missionaries called her a heathen. For years I
kept them out of Riva, with their mummery of morals and religion. Why,
there was no sin in Riva until I came—and then it wasn’t recognized
until the missionaries gave it a name. Monsieur Doctor, behold a man who
dwelt in Eden until the serpents drove him out.”

The doctor chuckled quietly.

“Tamea’s mother,” the sailor resumed, “had features as fine and regular
as any white woman. But then, why should she not? Her blood was pure,
because it was a chief’s blood. The dark skin, the flat nose and the
crinkly hair are souvenirs, in the Polynesian race, of their sojourn in
the Fijis before they resumed their age-old hegira that started in Asia
Minor. In the common people we find evidences of Papuan blood, and that
is negroid, Monsieur Doctor. But the pure-bred Polynesian is not a
nigger, as ignorant and stupid people might have you believe. They are a
lost fragment of the Caucasian race, and any ethnologist who has studied
them carefully and sympathetically knows this. Monsieur Doctor, they are
not of Malayan origin, but Cushite, and the Cushites were an Aryan
people, as doubtless you know.”

“My knowledge of ethnology is very meager, Captain Larrieau,” said the
doctor.

“Mine is not. Gaston of the Beard they call me down under the Line, but
I have a head to hold up my beard. How do you account for the fact that
the Polynesian priesthood in Hawaii was possessed of the story of the
Hebrew Genesis as early as the sixth century, and that, in many
respects, this version is more complete than the Jewish?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” the doctor protested. He had the feeling
that to argue with Larrieau was to argue with an encyclopedia.

“Well, they acquired the story while drifting eastward from the land of
their origin and establishing contact with the Israelites, although on
the other hand it may be an independent and original version of legends
common to the Semite and Aryan tribes of the remote past and handed down
to posterity quite as accurately as the Jewish version before the latter
became a part of the literature of that race.”

The doctor glanced at his watch. “Captain, it would be most delightful
to linger and receive instruction in so interesting a subject, but we
have a Japanese liner to clear before noon, so I must be off.”

“But,” persisted the sailor, “have I convinced you that, if this brutal
and iconoclastic world but knew it, my little Tamea is _all_ Caucasian,
not merely half?”

“Captain, your daughter is the most dazzling, the most glorious woman I
have ever seen.”

“Would you care to marry her, Monsieur Doctor?” The words shot out from
the man who had been condemned to a living death with calm but deadly
earnestness. “That is,” Larrieau continued, “provided you are not
already married.”

“I am engaged to be married, Captain.”

“You have seen Tamea. It will not be hard to forget the other woman.
Come, come, my boy! How does the proposition strike you?”

“It doesn’t strike me at all. One does not accept such a proposition for
consideration quite so abruptly, my friend.”

“Ah, why not? Why not, indeed? Because others do not? Blood of the
devil, what a horrible thing is tradition! If it were not a tradition
that a woman shall accept from her fiancé a diamond ring which the idiot
cannot, in all probability, afford to give her—well, women would not
accept them. If it were the custom, they would accept a blow or a brass
ring through the nose or a brand, with equal eagerness. Monsieur Doctor,
he who has not learned to accept both good and evil, the usual and the
unusual, abruptly and without mature consideration, has not learned to
live. Life has not given him of its richness and fulness. Why be afraid?
Why shrink from the silly comment of silly people who do not understand
when you have a woman with a glorious body, a glorious soul and a
glorious mind, to compensate you?”

“I am not free to marry her——”

Gaston of the Beard brushed aside this feeble excuse with a quotation
from Epictetus: “‘He only is free who does as he pleases.’”

But the young doctor was not to be persuaded by such philosophical
considerations.

“Has your fiancée a _dot_ of a quarter of a million dollars?” Larrieau
shot at him.

“It is quite useless to discuss the matter, Captain.”

The latter hung his head, disappointed. “You realize why I asked you, of
course,” he said presently.

“I do, Captain. You must see her provided for. You were at some pains to
prove to me that her blood was the equal of mine——”

“I spoke of her mother’s people. But I am not a common man. There is
blood and breeding back of me—yes, far back, but I can trace it.”

“You pay me a tremendous compliment, Captain.”

“You are young, you have education, intelligence. You are a doctor, a
man of broad human sympathy and understanding. It is too bad your spirit
is not free. Too bad!”

“I will return for you this afternoon, about six o’clock, Captain. You
will not attempt to leave the Moorea, will you?”

“I told you I was a thrifty man, but I did not tell you, also, that I am
generous.”

“I am rebuked, Captain Larrieau. Forgive me.”

“On one condition. Give my vessel pratique—now.”

“I dare say we can risk that. But why do you ask it?”

“So that young Mr. Pritchard, of Casson and Pritchard, my owners, may be
permitted to come aboard, with an attorney. I have some business details
to attend to before I accompany you to the quarantine shed at Angel
Island. There is the business of the Moorea, and the financial future of
my Tamea must be provided for.”

“Do you wish me to return to the dock and telephone Mr. Pritchard?”

“If you will be so kind. And ask Mr. Pritchard to bring flowers—a great
many beautiful flowers. We sons of Cush are childishly fond of flowers.”

The health officer nodded and went over the side into the Customs tug
with a constricted feeling in his throat. Had he not gone then he would
have remained to weep, with Tamea, for old Gaston of the Beard!