"They sing well," he said, "these Ahu Ahu people; I like to listen to them. That is a hymn, but a stranger would never suspect it--the music is pure heathen. Look at the torchlights in the village; smell the land breeze--it would tell you you were in the islands if you were set down here blindfold from a place ten thousand miles away. With that singing in one's ears, it is not difficult to fancy oneself in a long canoe, at the end of an old-time voyage, chanting a song of thanksgiving to the gods who have brought us safely home."
He is by no means the traditional supercargo of a trading schooner, this Tari; I have wasted a good deal of time speculating as to his origin and the reasons for his choosing this mode of life. An Englishman with a hint of Oxford in his voice--quite obviously what we call a gentleman--a reader of reviews, the possessor (at his charming place on Nukutere) of an enviable collection of books on the natural history and ethnology of the South Seas, he seldom speaks of himself or of his people at home. For twenty years he has been known in this part of the world--trading on Penrhyn, Rakahanga, Tupuai, the atolls of the Paumotu. He speaks a dozen of the island dialects, can join in the singing of _Utes_, or bring a roar of applause by his skill in the dances of widely separated groups. When the war broke out he enlisted as a private in a New Zealand battalion, and the close of hostilities found him with decorations for gallantry, the rank of captain, and the scars of honorable wounds. As a subject for conversation, the war interests him as little as his own life, but this evening he had emptied a full bottle of rum, and was in the mildly mellow state which is his nearest approach to intoxication.
"I never thought I'd see the old country again," he said, "but the war changed all that. I got a nasty wound in Gallipoli, you see, and they sent me home to convalesce. The family wasn't meant to know I was hurt, but they saw a bit of a thing in the paper [an account of the exploit which won Tari his D. C. M.], and there they were at the dock when the transport off-loaded. I hadn't laid eyes on them for fifteen years.... The old governor--by Jove! he was decent. It was all arranged that I should stop in England when the war was over; I thought myself it was a go. When the job was finished, and I'd got a special dispensation to be demobbed at home, I stood it for a fortnight and then gave up....