PALLOU'S TALOI



A Memory Of The Paumotus


I stayed once at Rotoava--in the Low Archipelago, Eastern
Polynesia--while suffering from injuries received in a boat accident
one wild night. My host, the Rotoava trader, was a sociable old pirate,
whose convivial soul would never let him drink alone. He was by trade a
boat-builder, having had, in his early days, a shed at Miller's Point,
in Sydney, where he made money and married a wife. But this latter
event was poor Tom Oscott's undoing, and in the end he took his chest
of tools on board the THYRA trading brig, and sailed away to Polynesia.
Finally, after many years' wandering, he settled down at Rotoava as a
trader and boat-builder, and became a noted drinker of bottled beer.

The only method by which I could avoid his incessant invitations to
"have another" was to get his wife and children to carry me down to his
work-shed, built in a lovely spot surrounded by giant PUKA trees. Here,
under the shade, I had my mats spread, and with one of his children
sitting at my head to fan away the flies, I lay and watched, through
the belt of coconuts that lined the beach, the blue rollers breaking on
the reef and the snow-white boatswain-birds floating high overhead.