South Sea Tales | Page 3

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This e-text was typed by Theresa Armao, Albany, New York.

SOUTH SEA TALES by Jack London
CONTENTS
The House of Mapuhi
The Whale Tooth
Mauki
"Yah! Yah! Yah!"

The Heathen
The Terrible Solomons
The Inevitable White Man
The Seed of McCoy

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI
Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in
the light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just
outside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water,
a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in
circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark. On
the bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and
from the deck of the schooner, across the slender ring of the atoll, the
divers could be seen at work. But the lagoon had no entrance for even a
trading schooner. With a favoring breeze cutters could win in through
the tortuous and shallow channel, but the schooners lay off and on
outside and sent in their small boats.
The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozen
brown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took the
oars, while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a young man
garbed in the tropic white that marks the European. The golden strain
of Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin and cast up
golden sheens and lights through the glimmering blue of his eyes.
Raoul he was, Alexandre Raoul, youngest son of Marie Raoul, the
wealthy quarter-caste, who owned and managed half a dozen trading
schooners similar to the Aorai. Across an eddy just outside the entrance,
and in and through and over a boiling tide-rip, the boat fought its way
to the mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young Raoul leaped out upon the
white sand and shook hands with a tall native. The man's chest and
shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a right arm, beyond the
flesh of which the age-whitened bone projected several inches, attested

the encounter with a shark that had put an end to his diving days and
made him a fawner and an intriguer for small favors.
"Have you heard, Alec?" were his first words. "Mapuhi has found a
pearl--such a pearl. Never was there one like it ever fished up in
Hikueru, nor in all the Paumotus, nor in all the world. Buy it from him.
He has it now. And remember that I told you first. He is a fool and you
can get it cheap. Have you any tobacco?"
Straight up the beach to a shack under a pandanus tree Raoul headed.
He was his mother's supercargo, and his business was to comb all the
Paumotus for the wealth of copra, shell, and pearls that they yielded up.
He was a young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity,
and he suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in
pricing pearls. But when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he
managed to suppress the startle it gave him, and to maintain a careless,
commercial expression on his face. For the pearl had struck him a blow.
It was large as a pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a whiteness that
reflected opalescent lights from all colors about it. It was alive. Never
had he seen anything like it. When Mapuhi dropped it into his hand he
was surprised by the weight of it. That showed that it was a good pearl.
He examined it closely, through a pocket magnifying glass. It was
without flaw or blemish. The purity of it seemed almost to