on us in showers and clouds, aiding the flying scud in shielding
the distance ahead from our view.

"Aita e ravea," shouted Teta to me. "It is impossible to go on."

We were all as wet as if in the sea, our faces and bodies stung by
the spindrift, and we were barely able to glimpse a dark and heaving
panorama of surf, rock, and bluff in the mists that now and again
were penetrated by the hot sun.

"Maitai! Hohoi!" I replied above the clangor, and raised my paddle.

Carefully and in a wide circle the vaa crept around to head back toward
our port, and it was after sunset before we were in Teta's house in
Puforatoai. The villagers met us with torches and incredulous aues
and we walked up the road singing the song of the "Ai Dobbebelly
Dobbebelly," which was known wherever a fisher for market dwelt in
all Tahiti. The farther from Papeete and more and more as time passed,
the words lost resemblance to English, and became mere native sounds
without any exact meaning, but with a never-forgotten sentiment of
rebellion against government and of gild alliance.

"Give us a hand-out!" had changed from "hizzandow" in Papeete, to
"Hitia o te ra!" which meant that the sun was rising. Within a year
or two the entire text would doubtless merge into Tahitian with only
the martial air of "Revive us again!" and the dimming memory of the
fish-strike to recall its origin. I had known a native who, whenever
he approached me, sang in a faltering tone, "Feery feery!"

I asked him after many weeks what he meant, and he said that that was a
himene, which a young American had sung at his potations in his village
in the Marquesas Islands. I had him repeat "Feery feery!" dozens of
times, and finally snatched at an old glee which ran through my mind:
"Shoo Fly, don't bother me!" and when I sang it,

"I feel, I feel, I feel,
I feel like a morning star!"

he struck his thigh, and said, "Ea! That is the very thing!" And to be
fair to all races, one has only to listen to an American assemblage
singing "The Starspangled Banner" to learn that after the first few
lines most patriots decline into "ah-ah-la-la-ha-la-ah-la-la."

Before our supper of fish and fei, Teta, who was a deacon in the
Protestant church, but of superior knowledge of his own tongue and
legends, asked a blessing of God, and afterward recited for me the
Tahitian chant of creation, the source of which was in the very
beginnings of his race, perhaps even previous to the