When one considers the situation, one is almost driven to the conclusion that the white race flourishes on impurity and corruption.Natural selection, however, gives the explanation.We of the white race are the survivors and the descendants of the thousands of generations of survivors in the war with the micro-organisms.Whenever one of us was born with a constitution peculiarly receptive to these minute enemies, such a one promptly died.Only those of us survived who could withstand them.We who are alive are the immune, the fit--the ones best constituted to live in a world of hostile micro-organisms.The poor Marquesans had undergone no such selection.They were not immune.And they, who had made a custom of eating their enemies, were now eaten by enemies so microscopic as to be invisible, and against whom no war of dart and javelin was possible.On the other hand, had there been a few hundred thousand Marquesans to begin with, there might have been sufficient survivors to lay the foundation for a new race--a regenerated race, if a plunge into a festering bath of organic poison can be called regeneration.
We unsaddled our horses for lunch, and after we had fought the stallions apart--mine with several fresh chunks bitten out of his back--and after we had vainly fought the sand-flies, we ate bananas and tinned meats, washed down by generous draughts of cocoanut milk.
There was little to be seen.The jungle had rushed back and engulfed the puny works of man.Here and there pai-pais were to be stumbled upon, but there were no inscriptions, no hieroglyphics, no clues to the past they attested--only dumb stones, builded and carved by hands that were forgotten dust.Out of the pai-pais grew great trees, jealous of the wrought work of man, splitting and scattering the stones back into the primeval chaos.
We gave up the jungle and sought the stream with the idea of evading the sand-flies.Vain hope! To go in swimming one must take off his clothes.The sand-flies are aware of the fact, and they lurk by the river bank in countless myriads.In the native they are called the nau-nau, which is pronounced "now-now." They are certainly well named, for they are the insistent present.There is no past nor future when they fasten upon one's epidermis, and I am willing to wager that Omer Khayyam could never have written the Rubaiyat in the valley of Typee--it would have been psychologically impossible.Imade the strategic mistake of undressing on the edge of a steep bank where I could dive in but could not climb out.When I was ready to dress, I had a hundred yards' walk on the bank before I could reach my clothes.At the first step, fully ten thousand nau-naus landed upon me.At the second step I was walking in a cloud.By the third step the sun was dimmed in the sky.After that I don't know what happened.When I arrived at my clothes, I was a maniac.And here enters my grand tactical error.There is only one rule of conduct in dealing with nau-naus.Never swat them.Whatever you do, don't swat them.They are so vicious that in the instant of annihilation they eject their last atom of poison into your carcass.You must pluck them delicately, between thumb and forefinger, and persuade them gently to remove their proboscides from your quivering flesh.
It is like pulling teeth.But the difficulty was that the teeth sprouted faster than I could pull them, so I swatted, and, so doing, filled myself full with their poison.This was a week ago.At the present moment I resemble a sadly neglected smallpox convalescent.