o, under running water. I jumped and slid and slipped,
following the unhappy plunging horse. Darkness came on quickly with
the blinding rain, and the descent was often at an angle of
forty-five degrees, over rocks, eroded hills, along the edge of a
precipice. I fell here, and saved myself by catching a root in the
trail and pulling myself up again. I would have dropped upon the roof
of the gendarme's house a thousand feet below.

We heard the sound of the surf, and letting the horse go, Orivie led
me, by that sense we surrender for the comforts of civilization,
down the bed of a cascade to the River of Oomoa, which we waded, and
then arrived at Grelet's house. We had come thirteen miles. I was
tired, but Orivie made nothing of the journey.

Covered with mud as I was, I went to the river and bathed in the
rain and, returning to the house, looked after my health. A half
ounce of rum, a pint of cocoanut-milk from a very young nut, the
juice of half a lime just from the tree, two lumps of sugar, and I
had an invigorating draught, long enough for a golf player after
thirty-six holes, and delicate enough for a debutante after her
first cotillion. The Paumotan boys and Pae looked on in horror,
saying that I was spoiling good rum.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Return in a canoe to Atuona; Tetuahunahuna relates the story of the
girl who rode the white horse in the celebration of the fete of Joan
of Arc in Tai-o-hae; Proof that sharks hate women; steering by the
stars to Atuona beach.

The canoe we had followed to Hanavave stopped in Oomoa on its way to
Hiva-oa, my home, for I had bargained with Tetuahunahuna, its owner,
for my conveyance to Atuona. Grelet would eventually have
transported me, but so great was his aversion to leaving Fatu-hiva
that I felt it would be asking too much of him. He reminded me that
Kant, the great metaphysician, had lived eighty years in his
birthplace and never stirred more than seven miles from it.

The canoe had come to Hanavave to bring back two young women. One
was dark, a voluptuous figure in a pink satin gown over a lace
petticoat. A leghorn hat, trimmed with shells and dried nuts, sat
coquettishly upon her masses of raven hair. Upon her neck, rounded
as a young cocoanut-tree, was a necklace of pearls that an empress
might have envied her, had they been real and not the synthetic gift
of some trader. Small and shapely feet, bare, peeped from under her
filmy frills. Her eyes were the large, l