The natives hoped fervently that the war was between France and Germany, and that France would be defeated. After generations of rule by France, the vanquished still felt an aversion to their conquerors here, as in the Holy Land when Herod ruled.
“I hope France get his,” said a chief, aside, to me.
The mail’s delay upset all business. Letters closed on the day the liner was expected were reopened. For three days the girls at Lovaina’s had worn their best peignoirs, and several times donned shoes and stockings to go to the quay. Passengers for San Francisco who had packed their trunks had unpacked them. The air of expectancy which Papeete wore for a day or two before steamer-day had been so heated by postponement that nerves came to the surface.
Tahiti was a place of no exact knowledge. Few residents knew the names of the streets. Some of the larger business houses had no signs to indicate the firms’ names or what they sold. Hardly any one knew the names of the trees or the flowers or fishes or shells.
A story once told, even facts thoroughly well known, changed with each repetition. A month after an occurrence one might search in vain for the actuality. It was more difficult to learn truthful details than anywhere I had been. The French are niggardly of publications concerning Tahiti. An almanac once a year contained a few figures and facts of interest, but with no newspapers within thousands of miles, every person was his own journal, and prejudices and interest dictated all oral records.
McHenry hushed war reports to talk about Brown, an American merchant who had left the club a moment before, after a Bourbon straight alone at the bar. McHenry was a trader, mariner, adventurer, gambler, and boaster. Rough and ready, witty, profane, and obscene, he bubbled over with tales of reef and sea, of women and men he had met, of lawless tricks on natives, of storm and starvation, and of his claimed illicit loves. Loud-mouthed, bullet-headed, beady-eyed, a chunk of rank flesh shaped by a hundred sordid deeds, he must get the center of attention by any hazard.
“Brown’s purty stuck up now,” he said acridly. “I remember the time when he didn’t have a pot to cook in. He had thirty Chile dollars a month wages. We come on the beach the same day in the same ship. His shoes were busted out, and he was crazy to get money for a new girl he had. There was a Chink had eighteen tins of vanilla-beans worth about two hundred American dollars each. He got the Chink to believe he could handle the vanilla for him, and got hold of it, and then out by the vegetable garden Brown hit the poor devil of a Chink over the nut with a club.”
McHenry got up from the table, and with Llewellyn’s walking-stick showed exactly how the blow was struck. He brought down the cane so viciously against the edge of the table that he spilled our rum punches.
“Mac,” exclaimed Llewellyn, testily, as he shot him a hot glance from the melancholy eyes under his black thatch of brows, “behave yourself! You know you’re lying.”
McHenry laughed sourly, and went on: