In the Marquesas islands, that most distant and most mysterious of South Sea archipelagos, tattooing reached its highest development, and there it was the most beautiful form of art known to the most perfect physical people of the world.

To achieve a fairly complete picture upon one's body meant many months of intense suffering, the expenditure of much wealth, and a decade of years of very gradual progress toward the goal after manhood was attained; but for a man to lack the Stripes of Terror upon his face, to have a bare countenance, or one not yet marked by the initial strokes of the hammer of the tattooer, was to be a poltroon, and despised of his tribe.

Such a one must expect to have no apple of love thrown at him, to awaken no passion in womankind, nor ever to find a wife to bear him children. He was as the giaour among the Turks. He had no honor in life or death, no foothold in the ranks of the warriors, or place among the shades of Po.

So when white men were cast by ship

wreck in those wondrous isles of the far Pacific, or fled from duty on whalers or war-ships, and sought to stay among the Marquesans, they acceded to the honored customs of their hosts, and adopted their facial adornment, and often in the course of years their whole bizarre garb. The courage that did not shrink from dwelling among cannibals could not wilt at the blow of the hama.

The explorer in the far North who lets his face become covered with a great growth of hair, when he intends to return to civilization can with a few strokes of a razor be again as before. But once the curious ink of the tattooer has bitten into the skin, it is there forever. It is like the pits of smallpox; it can never be erased. Through all his life, and into the grave itself, the human canvas must bear the pictures painted by the artist of the needles. It was a chain as strong as steel, riveted on him, that fastened him to those lotos isles. So men of America or Europe did not return to their native land from the Marquesas, but died there. The whorls and lines in the ama dye wrote exile forever from the loved ones at home.

Is that wholly true? Had not science or sorcery nepenthe for the afflicted by such a horror-horror if unwanted? Is there not one who has escaped such a fate when life had become fearful under it?

In the valley of Hanavave, in the island of Fatuhiva, where I lived among the Marquesans, an aged tattooer, himself a sorcerer of power, told me the

story. It is not mine, but his, and it has in it all the strange flavor of those exotic gardens of mystery. It is true, and I have often thought of the man most concerned in it.

We were seated, Puhi Enata and I, upon the paepae of his home, the platform of huge stones on which all houses in the Land of the War Fleet are built.

In the humid air of that tropic parallel he made pass before me a panorama of fantastic tragedy as real as the mysterious life about me, but as astounding and as vivid in its facts and its narration as the recital of a drama of ancient Athens by a master of histrionics. I laughed or shuddered with the incidents of the story. He spoke in his native tongue, and I have given his words as they filtered through the screen of my alien mind, not always exactly, but in consonance with the cast of thought of that far-away and unknown land.

"We had no whites here when he came, this man of your islands. Other valleys had them, but Hanavave, no. Few ships have come to this bay. Taiohae, a day and a night and more distant, they sought for wood and water and now for copra, but Hanavave was, as always, lived in by us only. Yet we ever welcomed the haoe, the stranger, for he had ways of interest, and often magic greater than ours.

"He came one day on a ship from far, this white man I tell about, and of whom even now I often meditate. He was not of the sea, but on the ship as one who pays to move about over the waters, looking for something of interest. That thing he found here. He brought ashore his guns and powder, his other possessions of wonder, and let the ship go away without him. He had seen Titihuti, and his koekoe, his spirit, was set aflame."

I needed no description by the tuhuka to bring before me Titihuti, to see that maddening, matchless child-woman, nor to know the desperate plight of a white who fell in love with her. She must have been the Helen of these Pacific Greeks, for men came from other islands to woo her, fought over her, and embroiled tribes in bloody warfare at her whim. Her affairs had been the history of her valley for a brief period, and were

immortalized in chants and in legends though she still lived. Many had related to me stories of her beauty, her spell over men, and her wicked pleasure in deceiving them.

She was the daughter of a chief, of a long line of hakaiki, of noble mothers and of warriors, and an adept in the marvelous cult of beauty, of sex expression, which to the Marquesan woman was the field of her dearest ambition, the professional stage and the salon of society.

"The day he came to this beach,” said the sorcerer, "was the day she first danced in the Grove of the Mei, at the annual gathering of the tribe. All the people of the ship were invited, and not least he who had no duties but his desires, and who brought from the vessel a barrel of rum as his gift to the people. It was as rich as the full moon, as strong as the surf in storm, and in every drop a dream of fortune. It made that foreigner of note at once, and he was given a seat at the Hurahura, the Dance of Passion, in which Titihuti for the first time took her place as a woman and an equal of others. She was then thirteen years old, a moi kanahau, her form as the bud of the pahue flower, her hair red-gold, like the fish of the lagoon, and her skin as the fresh-opened breadfruit. The Grove of the Mei you have been in, but you cannot imagine that scene. hundred torches of candlenuts, strung on the spine of the palm-leaf, lit the dancing mead. The grass had been cut to a smoothness, and all the valley was there. As is usual in these annual débuts of our girls, at the height of the breadfruit season, a dozen were allowed to show their beauty and skill. These danced to the music of drums and of handclapping and chanting before the entire tribe seated on the grass."

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The old man lit the pipe, which had gone out, and puffed out the blue clouds of smoke as if they were recollections of the past.

"Finally, as the custom is, the plaudits of the crowd narrowed the contest to three. Each as she danced appealed for approval, and each had followers. By the judgment of the throng all had retired but three after a first effort. These began the formal titii e te epo. This is

the dance of love, the dance we Marquesans have ever made the test of the female's fascination.

"Before the first of the three danced, the rum was passed. It was drunk from cups of leaves, and each in turn drew from the cask. It ran through our veins like fire through the pandanus. The great drum then sounded the call. "Tahiatini came from the shadow of the trees. She wore a dress of tapa, made from the pith of the mulberrytree, and as the dance became faster, she tossed it off, until she moved about quite nude. For this, of course, is part of the test. A hundred men, mostly young, stood and watched her, and watching them were the judges, the elders of the race, men and women. For, Menike, in the expression, the heat, or the coolness of those standing men was counted the success or failure of the dancer. And they were taught by pride and by the rules of the event to conceal every feeling, as did the warrior who faced the launched spear. They were to be as the stones of the paepae.

"Tahiatini passed back into the trees, and Moeo succeeded her. She seemed to feel that Tahiatini had not scored heavily. She danced marvelously for one who had never before been in the Grove of the Mei, and the shrewd judges reckoned more than one of the silent hundred who could not restrain some mark of approval. There was, when she fell back, a shout of praise from the crowd, and the judges conferred while the rum was handed about for the second time.

"Then Titihuti was thrust out from the darkness, and from her first step we realized that a new enchantress had come to torment the warriors. I have lived long, and many of those dances in the Grove of the Mei I have seen. Never before or since that night have I known a girl to do what she did. Her kahu of tapa was as red as the sun when the sea swallows it, and hung over one shoulder, so that her bosom, as white as the ripe cocoanut, gleamed in the light of the burning ama.

"Her hair was in two plaits of flame, and the glittering ghost flowers were over her ears. You know she had for months been out of the day, and under the hands of those who prepare the

dancers. Her body was as rounded as the silken bamboo, and her skin shone with the gloss of ceaseless care.

"She advanced before the silent hundred, moving as the slow waters of the brook, and as she passed each one she looked into his eyes and challenged him, as the fighting man his enemy. Only she looked love and not hatred. Then she bounded into the center of the line, and casting off her kahu, she stood before them, and for the first time bared her beautiful body in the titii e te epo, the Dance of the Naked. She fluttered as a bird a few moments, the bird that seeks a mate, the kuku of the valley. On her little saffroned feet she ran about, and the light left her now in brilliancy and now in shadow. She was searching for the way from childhood to womanhood.

"Then the great pahu, the war drum of human skin, was struck by O Nuku, the sea-shells blew loudly, and the Hurahura was proclaimed. You know that. Few are the men who resist. Titihuti was as one aided by Veinehae, the Woman Demon. She flung herself into that dance with madness. All her life she and her mother had waited that moment. If she could tear the hearts of those warriors so that their breasts heaved, their limbs twitched, and their eyes fell before her, her honor was as the winner of a battle. It was the supreme hour of a woman's existence.

"The judges seized the flambeaux and scrutinized closely the faces of the men. First one yielded and then another. Try as they might to be as the rocks of the High Place, they felt the heat and melted. A dozen were told off in the first few minutes of Titihuti's dance, though Tahiatini and Moeo had won but two or three. Faster grew the music, and faster spun about her hips the torso of Titihuti. The judges caught the rhythm. They themselves were convulsed by the spell of the girl. The whole line of the silent hundred was breaking when, as the breadfruit falls from the tree, suddenly sprang upon the mead the foreigner who had come but that day. Though others of the ship tried to hold him, he broke from them, and, clasping Titihuti in his arms, declared that she was his, and that he would defend his

capture. The drums were quieted, the judges rushed to the pair, and for the time of a wave's lapping the beach spears were seized.

"But the ritual of the rum began, and in the crush about the cask the judges awarded Titihuti the Orchid of the Bird, the reward of the First Dancer. She stood in the light of the now dying torches, and when the foreigner would embrace her and lead her away, she turned her laughing eyes toward him, and called out so that many heard:

"You are without ornament, O Haoe. Cover your face as do Marquesan lovers, or get you back to your island!"

"Then she hurried away to receive the praise and to taste the glory of her achievement among her own family."

The Taua took his long knife and with repeated blows hacked off the upper half of a cocoanut to make ready another drink. I had a very vivid idea of the situation he had described. That handsome young man of Europe, belike of wealth, seeking to surrender to his vagrant fancies in this contrasting environment, and finding that among these savages he had position only as his rum bought it with the men, and was without it at all among the women. One could fancy him all afire after that dance of abandon, ready on the instant to yield to that deepest of all instincts, and surprised, astounded, almost unbelieving at his repulse. He might have learned that such repulse was not even in the manners of the Marquesans, but solely the whim of Titihuti, the beginning of that career of whimsical passion and insouciance which carried her fame from island to island and fetched other proud whites from afar to know her favor. He himself had come a long way to be the unwitting victim of the most prankish girl and woman who ever danced a tribe to death and destruction, but who withal was worth more than she who launched the thousand ships to batter Ilium's towers.

"And did he cover his face?" I demanded, hurrying to follow the windings of Fate.

"E!" said the sorcerer. "He gained the friendship of chiefs. He let his ship sail away with but a paper with words to his tribe, and he stayed on. He

hunted, he swam, and he drank, but he could not touch his nose to the nose of Titihuti, for his nose was naked. Weeks passed, but not his passion. He hovered about her as the great moth seeks the fireflies, but ever she was busied with her pomades and her massage, the ena unguent and the baths, the omi-omi and the combing of her red-gold tresses. She had set him aflame, but had no alleviation for him.

"And then when the moon was at its height she danced again, this time alone, as the undisputed vehine haka of Fatuhiva. The foreigner sat and gazed, and when Titihuti glided to where he was, and planting her feet a metero away, addressed herself to him, he shook with longing. She was perfumed with the jasmin, and about her breasts were rings of those pink orchids of the mountains. The foreigner felt the warmth of her presence as she posed in the attitudes of love. He bounded to his feet, and clasping her for the second time to him, he shouted that he would be tattooed, he would be a man among men in the Marquesas.

"There was no delay; I myself tattooed him. As always the custom, I took him into the mountains and built the patiki, the house for the rite. That is as it should be, for tattooing is of our gods and of our religion before the whites destroyed it. I was and am the master of our arts. I did not sketch out my design upon his skin with burned bamboo, as do some, but struck home the ama ink directly. My needles were the bones of one whom I had slain, an enemy of the Oi tribe. I myself gathered the candlenuts and, burning them to powder, mixed that with water and made my color. My mallet, or hama, was the shin of another whom I had eaten."

Such a man as Leonardo, who painted "Mona Lisa" and erected a hundred other beautiful things, or Cellini of the book and a vast creation of intricate marvels, would have understood the exactness of that art of tattooing in the Marquesas. Suppose "Mona Lisa" herself, an expanse of her fair back, and not mere linen, bore her picture. What infinite pains! Not more than took the taua in such a task. In his mind his plan, he dipped his needle in the ama