I shall be here, and the tears fall like the river flows.
O friend and lover, the time has come. Farewell!"

The sky was ominous and the boats of the _Saint Francois_ were
running a heavy surf. I waded waist-deep through the breakers to
climb into one. Malicious Gossip, Ghost Girl and the little leper
lass, Many Daughters, were sobbing, their dresses lifted to their
eyes.

"_Hee poihoo!_" cried the steersman. The men in the breakers shoved
hard, and leaped in, and we were gone.

My last hour in the Marquesas had come. I should never return. The
beauty, the depressingness of these islands is overwhelming. Why
could not this idyllic, fierce, laughter-loving people have stayed
savage and strong, wicked and clean? The artists alone have known
the flower destroyed here, the possible growth into greatness and
purity that was choked in the smoke of white lust and greed.

At eight o'clock at night we were ready to depart.

The bell in the engine-room rang, the captain shouted orders from
the bridge, the anchors were hoisted aboard. The propeller began to
turn. The searchlight of the _Saint Francois_ played upon the rocky
stairway of Taha-Uka, penciled for a moment the dark line of the
cliffs, swept the half circle into Atuona Inlet, and lingered on the
white cross of Calvary where Gauguin lies.

The gentle rain in the shaft of light looked like quicksilver. The
smoke from the funnel mixed in the heavy air with the mist and the
light, and formed a fantastic beam of vapor from the ship to the
shore. Up this stream of quivering, scintillating irradiation, as
brilliant as flashing water in the sun, flew from the land thousands
of gauze-winged insects, the great moths of the night, wondrous,
shimmering bits of life, seeming all fire in the strange atmosphere.
Drawn from their homes in the dark groves by this marvelous
illumination, they climbed higher and higher in the dazzling
splendor until they reached its source, where they crumpled and died.
They seemed the souls of the island folk.

They pass mute, falling like the breadfruit in their dark groves.
Soon none will be left to tell their departed glories. Their skulls
perhaps shall speak to the stranger who comes a few decades hence,
of a manly people, once magnificently perfect in body, masters of
their seas, unexcelled in the record of humanity in beauty, vigor,
and valor.

To-day, insignificant in numbers, unsung in history, they go to the
abode of their dark spi