The Project Gutenberg EBook of South Sea Tales, by Jack London

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Title: South Sea Tales

Author: Jack London

Release Date: February, 1998 [EBook #1208]
Posting Date: November 8, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTH SEA TALES ***

Produced by Theresa Armao

SOUTH SEA TALES

By Jack London

CONTENTS

The House of Mapuhi

The Whale Tooth

Mauki

"Yah! Yah! Yah!"

The Heathen

The Terrible Solomons

The Inevitable White Man

The Seed of McCoy

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in
the light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just
outside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water,
a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in
circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark. On the
bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and from the
deck of the schooner, across the slender ring of the atoll, the divers
could be seen at work. But the lagoon had no entrance for even a trading
schooner. With a favoring breeze cutters could win in through the
tortuous and shallow channel, but the schooners lay off and on outside
and sent in their small boats.

The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozen
brown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took the
oars, while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a young
man garbed in the tropic white that marks the European. The golden
strain of Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin
and cast up golden sheens and lights through the glimmering blue of his
eyes. Raoul he was, Alexandre Raoul, youngest son of Marie Raoul,
the wealthy quarter-caste, who owned and managed half a dozen trading
schooners similar to the Aorai. Across an eddy just outside the
entrance, and in and through and over a boiling tide-rip, the boat
fought its way to the mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young Raoul leaped
out upon the white sand and shook hands with a tall native. The man's
chest and shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a