When a steamship was in port the Tiare was a hurly-burly. Perhaps forty or even a hundred extra patrons came for meals or drinks. It was amusing to hear their uncomprehending anger at their failure to obtain quick service or even a smile by their accustomed manner toward dark peoples. The British, who were the majority of the travelers, have a cold, autocratic attitude toward all who wait upon them, but especially toward those of the colored races. In Tahiti they suffered utter dismay, because Tahitians know no servitude and pay no attention to sharp words.
I saw a red-faced woman giving an order for apéritifs to To Sen, the Chinese waiter.
“Two old-fashioned gin cocktails,” she iterated. “You savee, gin and bitters? Be sure it’s Angostura, and lemon and soda, and two Manhattans with rye whisky. Hurry along now! Old-fashioned, remember!”
In ten minutes Temanu came for the order. To Sen knew no English, and Temanu only, “Yais, ma darleeng,” and “Whatnahell?”
“Spik Furanche?” she begged.
“Oui, oui!” said the red-faced lady. “Dooze cocktail! Vous savez cocktail, à la mode des ancients? Gin, oon dash bittair, lem’ et soda!”
“Mais, madame, douze cocktail!” and the half-caste Chinese girl held up all her fingers and added two more. “Vous n’êtes que quatre ici! Quatre cocktails, n’est-ce pas?”
“Dooze gin, dooze Manhattan? My heavens! They ought to understand my French in this out-of-the-way place when they do in Paris. Listen! Dooze is two in French,” and she held up two pudgy fingers. But Temanu was gone and returned with four cocktails made after her own liking.
All the girls, Atupu, Iromea, Pepe, Maru, Tetua, and Mme. Rose and Mama-Maru, helped in the service, some beginning with shoes and stockings, but soon slipping them off as the crowd grew and their feet became weary. Lovaina herself moved happily about the salle-à-manger telling her friends that she was a grandmother. A letter had given the information that her daughter had a child. She was a doting parent, and we all must toast the newborn. Two grave professors of the University of California, ichthyologists or entomologists, sat entranced at the unconventionality of the scene, drinking vin ordinaire and gazing at the Tahitian girls, or eating breadfruit, raw fish, and taro, as if they were on Mars and did not know how they got there.
I saw an entry in Lovaina’s day-book on the table: