But to resume about Pokara. After leaving those old salts, I happened to be strolling beneath the coco-palms by Motoa beach, a lonely spot by the lagoons outside Papeete. I was standing by the wooden-columned portico of a forest shanty listening to the tuneless chuckling of the blue-winged parakeets, when I was startled by seeing a handsome, silent figure standing beneath a palm tree. It was alive, for the full dark eyes blinked as they stared towards the mountains. The magnificently curved shoulders were squared to their full width, a tappa-sash of gorgeous colour swathed the waist and was tied bow-wise at the left hip, the tasselled end flung gracefully over the right shoulder. The figure exactly resembled a bronze statue. The left knee was bent slightly forward, and one hand was on the chin as the eyes stared in deep meditation. The pose was perfect. Had a handsome Greek statue suddenly stepped down from its pedestal and gripped my hand in friendship I could not have been more astonished. That figure was none other than old Pokara, shorn of his cumbersome merchandise and clad in the full festival costume of ancestral chiefdom. His eagle-like eyes had seen me coming down the orange groves!
The old chief bent forward on one knee, and, seizing my hand, pressed it fervently to his lips. I discovered that the little wooden building by the palms was the residence of a native friend of his, whom he had just left after a visit. For a while we walked together, then at my suggestion we went away over the slopes and retired into a café and had a drink. Lord Pokara and I became staunch friends. I found that he was looked upon by all the natives, and by the white settlers too, as a character worth knowing. His majestic bearing was not the least of his attractive attributes. Though his face was wrinkled into a deep, expressive map by Time’s toiling hand, his terra-cotta-hued shoulders, well greased with coco-nut oil, were as smooth as a youth’s. His thick head of hair was undoubtedly grey; but Pokara was “up to snuff,” and had checkmated Time’s tell-tale pigment by dying his locks to a golden hue with strong coral lime. He had evidently been a gay cavalier in his earlier days, for I observed that when the picturesque Tahitian maids passed us on the forest track, all chanting their _himines_ (legendary melodies), he returned their coquettish glances without stint, negligently tossing his shoulder-sash. Nor must we blame old Pokara for his love of sensuous beauty, for he was very old then and so must be sleeping soundly to-night.