Old chiefs, dethroned kings and discarded queens, after hearing my solos, conferred upon me their highest honours.
It was in a pagan citadel in the north-western bread-fruit forests, after performing Paganini’s bravura _Carnaval de Venise_ variations, that a mighty, tattooed monarch invested me with the South Sea equivalent of the Legion of Honour.
This degree was bestowed upon me in ancient style. Kneeling before the bamboo throne, I kissed the royal feet amid the wildest acclamations of the whole tribe. I was then tattooed on the right arm with peculiar spots, which turned out to represent a constellation of stars that were worshipped by that particular tribe. (I have those tattoo marks to this day.) I recall the admiration of the Marquesan belles as I stood by the bamboo throne wearing my insignia of knighthood—the whitened skull of some old-time warrior! I recall the music of the forest stream as it hurried by, and the noise of the winds in the giant bread-fruits, the monotone of the ocean beating inland as a majestic accompaniment to the musical exclamations of “Awai! Awai! Alohao! Talofa!” from the coral-red lips of sun-varnished savage girls, handsome, tattooed, lithesome, deep-bosomed chiefs, and youths.
I have been honoured with so many degrees, so many knighthoods, and so often elected to the peerage that it is no exaggeration on my part to say that I am a veritable living volume of all that’s distinguished—a genuine personification of _Who’s Who_.
I achieved far-flung fame as a mighty Tusitala, singer of wondrous songs on magic-wood with long spirit-finger (violin bow). Old semi-nude poets, scribes of the forest, left their forum-stumps of the village and followed me from village to village. Beautiful girls, arrayed in picturesque tappa of delicate leaves and shells, threw golden forest fruits at my feet, and then stood hushed, with finger to their lips as I played again. Kind, babbling old native women called me into their village homesteads, and without ceremony made me sit down and eat large gourds of taro and scented _poi-poi_, which was made of bananas and many indigenous fruits. As I seated myself on the homestead mat and ate, those kind old Marquesan women would squat and gaze upon me with intense curiosity, evincing little embarrassment at my presence. Indeed they would touch my white flesh, and one curious old chiefess leaned forward and lifted the upper lid of my eyes so as to better scan the unfamiliar colour, the grey-blue iris that so pleased those Marquesan ladies.