Never the twain shall meet

It was a song that never before had been sung; once sung, never again would it be heard. Such a song, indeed, as little girls croon to their dolls; half funeral chant, half hymn, sung in a minor key by a girl with a powerfully sweet lyric soprano. The last of the land breeze carried it aft to Gaston Larrieau, the master of the 200-ton auxiliary trading schooner Moorea, where he stood on the top step of the companion, his leonine head and tremendous shoulders showing above the deck-house, as he smoked his first after-breakfast pipe.

While he listened, a shadow passed over the man’s face, as when winds drive a dark cloud above a sunny plain. He removed his pipe thoughtfully to murmur:

“Ah, my poor Tamea! Dear child of the sun! Homesick already!” Then he came out on deck and stood by the weather rail, looking forward until he espied the figure of the singer stretched face downward, at full length, alongside the bowsprit, but snuggled comfortably in the belly of the jib. One arm enveloped the bowsprit; at each rise and fall of the Moorea’s long clipper bow, her feet, sandal-clad, beat the canvas in rhythm. And, because she was young and athrill with the music of the spheres, because the dark blue water purling under the schooner’s forefoot brought to her memories of the insistent, peaceful swish of the surf enveloping the outer reef at Riva, the girl Tamea sang:

“Behold! Tamea, Queen of Riva, Has forsaken her mother’s people. In her father’s great canoe called Moorea After the mother of Tamea, who loved him, Tamea sails over a cold sea To the white man’s country. Tamea is happy and curious. But if the hearts in this new land Are cold as the fog this morning, Then will the heart of Tamea grow heavy. Then will she weep for a sight of Riva. Then will she yearn for love and pleasure, For dancing and feasting; for the water White on the reef where the fishermen stand . . .”

“I must shake her out of that mood,” Larrieau muttered, and strode aft to the wheel. The Tahitian helmsman gave way to him and as the master put the helm down and the schooner came sharply up into the wind and hung there shivering her canvas until it cracked like pistol shots, Tamea rose briskly from her hammock in the belly of the jib and stood poised on the bowsprit, with one hand clasping the jib to steady her. The suddenness with which she had been disturbed and the air of regal hauteur she assumed as she faced aft for an explanation from the Tahitian helmsman, who had now resumed the wheel and was easing the Moorea away on her course once more, brought a bellow of Brobdingnagian laughter from Larrieau.

Tamea came aft with stately tread, pausing at the forward end of the deck-house. “So it was you, great, wicked Frenchman,” she cried in a Polynesian dialect. “Truly, my father forgets that he is but a wandering trader, while I am Tamea, Queen of Riva!” Simulating a royal fury she was far from feeling, Tamea grasped a bucket attached to a rope, dropped it overboard, drew it back filled with water and, poising it in position to hurl its contents, advanced to the assault.

“_Tiens!_” Gaston Larrieau chuckled. “I shall never succeed in making a Christian of you. It is written that even a queen shall honor her father and mother? nevertheless you, my own child, would dishonor me with sea water!” As she threatened him laughingly, he leaped for the opposite corner of the deck-house, and she saw that it was his humor to invite the deluge. Wherefore, with the perversity of her sex and royal blood, she deluged the helmsman, who stood grinning at her.

“Your eye belongs on the lubber’s mark, on the sails, on the horizon—anywhere but on me, Kahanaha,” she admonished the amazed fellow. And then, while Gaston Larrieau, momentarily off guard, stood roaring great gales of laughter at the discomfited Kahanaha, Queen Tamea of Riva dashed into his face fully a quart of water remaining in the bucket. She smiled upon Larrieau adorably.

“He laughs best who laughs last. Kahanaha, you may laugh.”

Larrieau dashed the water from his bush of a beard. “_Nom d’un chien!_ This is mutiny. Tamea, come here!” But Tamea merely wrinkled her nose at him, and when he charged at her she cried aloud, half delighted, half deliciously apprehensive, and started up the starboard main shrouds. Her father followed her, moving, despite his sixty years and his tremendous bulk, with something of the ease and swiftness of a bear.

At the masthead Tamea cowered, pretending to be frightened and cornered, until his hand reached for her slim ankle; when without the slightest hesitation she sprang for the backstay and went whizzing swiftly down to the deck. Here she threw him a peace offering, in the way of a kiss, but he ignored her. From the masthead he was looking out over the low-lying smear of fog that shrouded the coast of California, and the girl thrilled as his stentorian voice rang through the ship.

“Land, ho!”

Within a few minutes the Moorea had slipped through the cordon of fog into the sunshine. Off to starboard the red hull of the lightship loomed vividly against the blue of sea and sky; a white pilot schooner ratched lazily across their bows, while off to port three gasoline trawlers out of San Francisco coughed violently away toward the Cordelia banks, their hulls painted in bizarre effects of Mediterranean blue with yellow decks and upper works. Their Sicilian crews waved tassled, multicolored tam-o’-shanter caps at Tamea and when she threw kisses to them with both hands they shouted their approval in ringing fashion.

From Point San Pedro on the south to Point Reyes on the north fifty miles of green, mountainous shore line sweeping down abruptly to ocher-tinted bluffs lay outspread before Tamea. She viewed it with mixed feelings of awe, delight and a half sensed feeling of apprehension, for all that enthralling vision impressed her with the thought that beyond the indentation which her father called to her was the Golden Gate, lay another world of romance, of dreams, curiosity-compelling, palpitant with something of the same warmth that had nurtured Tamea in the little known, seldom visited and uncharted island kingdom under the Southern Cross. Following the fashion of her people when their emotions are profoundly stirred, again Tamea’s golden voice was lifted in a semi-chant, an improvised pæan of appreciation.

Down through the entrance the Moorea ramped, with Tamea standing far out on the bowsprit, as if she would be the first to arrive, the first to see the wonders she felt certain lurked just around the bend behind crumbling old Fort Winfield Scott. As she leaned against the jib stay and held on with her elbows she searched the shore line with her father’s marine glasses until, the Moorea having loafed up to the quarantine grounds, the crew disturbed the girl in order to take in the headsails.

They were scarcely snugged down before the Customs tug scraped alongside. While Gaston was down below in the cabin presenting his papers for the inspection of the port officer, a representative of the Public Health Service examined the crew on deck. Before Tamea he stood several moments in silent admiration. Then he asked:

“Miss, do you speak English?”

Tamea looked him over with frank admiration and approval. “You bet your sweet life I speak English,” she replied melodiously; and from her English the doctor knew that she also spoke French. Having heard her giving an order to the Kanaka steward in an alien tongue, he concluded she spoke Hawaiian and sought confirmation of that conclusion.

“No, mister, I do not speak Hawaiian,” said Tamea. “I can understand much of it, because all Polynesian languages are derived from the same Aryan source. The difference between the hundreds of languages in Polynesia is mostly one of dialect—phonetic differences, you know.”

He sighed. “I didn’t know, but I’m glad to find out—from you. Are you Venus or Juno or one of the Valkyries from some tropical Valhalla?”

“Now you grow very queer,” she retorted soberly. “You make the josh, and I do not like men who do that. I am Tamea Oluolu Larrieau. I am the Queen of Riva, and in Riva it is taboo to josh the Queen.”

“I think the Queen is a josher, however,” he replied gravely.

“Ah! You do not believe, then, that I am the Queen of Riva?”

“No, I do not. You’re the Queen of Hearts.”

Fortunately for Tamea she knew how to play casino and was, therefore, acquainted with the queen of hearts. Hence she could assimilate the compliment, and a ravishing smile was the reward of the daring doctor.

He bowed low.

“Will Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, Queen of Riva—wherever that may be, if it isn’t another name for Paradise, since an houri has come from Riva—oblige a mere mortal by opening her mouth, sticking out her tongue and saying, ‘_Ah-h-h!_’—like that.”

“Why?” There was suspicion in Tamea’s glance now.

“It is a ceremonial peculiar to this country, Your Majesty. It is required of all visitors, of whatever rank. An Indian prince did it yesterday and a dato from Java will do it this afternoon.”

Tamea shrugged—a Gallic shrug—and complied.

“What a lovely death it would be to be fatally bitten by those teeth! Now, just one more ceremonial, if you please. It is required that I shall look into your eyes very closely. You may have trachoma, but if you have I’ll never survive the shock of having to deport you.”

Again Tamea shrugged. A peculiar custom, she thought, but one that was not difficult to comply with.

“Well, if you’re a fair sample of the womanhood of Riva, O Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, I’m mighty glad that I’m not a practicing physician there. I should never earn a fee.”

“And if you should earn a fee nobody would think of paying it,” she laughed. “Perhaps, if you liked bananas or coconuts——” And her shoulders came up in collaboration, as it were, with an adorable little moue. The young doctor laughed happily.

“Alas! God help the poor missionaries with sirens like her on every hand,” he thought as he descended into the cabin, where Larrieau was in conference with an immigration official touching his daughter’s right to land. This detail was, happily, quickly passed and the health officer tapped Gaston Larrieau on the arm.

“Captain, it will be necessary for me to give you a physical examination before I can issue your vessel a clean bill of health.”

“Open your mouth and say, ‘_Ah-h-h!_’” commanded Tamea, who had followed the doctor below. “Then open your eyes and look wise. Is my father not a frail little man, eh?” she demanded of the doctor.

“The examination of this physical wreck is merely a matter of routine, Your Majesty.”

Gaston Larrieau; came close to the doctor and opened his cavernous mouth.

“_Ah-h-h!_” he said.