One evening, Lele said that she felt we had landed in a place where loose morals were the rule rather than the exception. When I look back at my notes from the time, she summed up matters with impressive accuracy. "For a century or more, these people have been patted on the head by outsiders and told what splendid Christians they are," she had said. "The visitors stay only long enough to hear the Pitcairners singing their hymns and helping each other get through a hard life. But ask the Pitcairn women why the rare birth on the island is usually an illegitimate child, what the young do when they go off into the valley or get together in their little club shack at night, and your answer is a stare off into the distance and a clumsy attempt to change the subject. You can ruin a new friendship by asking whether the Tahitian ideas about incest arrived with the mutineers and the Polynesian women."