“It’s hell how this place gets hold of you,” said Nance, who had shot pythons in Paraguay and had a yacht in Los Angeles harbor. “I dunno, it must be the cocoanuts or the breadfruit.”
Walking back alone through a by-path, I saw the old folks sitting on their verandas and the younger at dalliance in the many groves. Voices of girls called me:
“Haere me ne!” “Come to us!” “Hoere mai u nei ite po ia u nei!”
The Himene tatou Arearea of our Moorea expedition came from many windows, the accordions sweet and low, and the subdued chant in sympathy with the mellow hour. “The soft lasceevious stars leered from these velvet skies.”
Lovaina had gone to bed, but, with the lights on again, patrons of the prize-fight had dropped in. The Christchurch Kid had beaten Teaea, a native, the match being a preliminary clearing of the ground before the signal encounter with the bridegroom.
The glass doors of the salle-à-manger were broken in a playful scuffle between the whiskered doctor of the hospital, and Afa, the majordomo of the Tiare. The medical man ordered five bottles of champagne, and, putting them in his immense pockets, returned to his table and opened them all at once. He had them spouting about him while their fizz lasted, and then drank most of their contents. He then threw all the crockery of his table to the roadway, and Afa wrestled him into a better state, during which process the doors were smashed. When the bombilation became too fearful, Lovaina called out from her bed:
“Make smaller noise! Nobody is asleep!”
At two in the morning the gendarmes advised the last revelers to retire, and the Tiare became quiet. But Atupu slept in a little alcove by the bar, and any one in her favor had but to enter her chamber and pull her shapely leg to be served in case of dire need.
The incidents of the departure of the Noa-Noa that day for San Francisco will live in the annals of Papeete. Its calamitous happenings are “in the archives.” I have the word of the secretary-general of the Etablissments Français de l’Oceanie for that, and in the saloons and coffee-houses they talked loudly of the “bataille entre les cochons Anglais et les héros les Français et les Tahitiens.”
It was a battle that would have rejoiced the heart of Don Quixote, and that redoubtable knight had his prototype here in the van of it, the second in command of the police of Papeete, M. Lontane, the mimic of the Tiare celebration.