“C’est tres serieux,” whispered the secretary to the governor’s private secretary, a dapper little man whose flirting had made his wife a Niobe and alarmed the husbands and fathers of many French dames et filles.
“Serious, monsieur?” said the private secretary, twisting his black wisp of a mustache, “it is more than serious now; it is no longer the French Establishments of Oceania. It is between Great Britain and France.”
A peremptory order was given to drive every one off the quay, and though the crowd chaffed the police, the sweep of wharf was left free for the marchings and counter-marchings of the big men.
“What would be the result? Would the entire British population of the ship resist the taking away of any of the crew? Oh, if the paltry French administration at Paris had not removed the companies of soldiers who until recently had been the pride of Papeete! And crown of misfortune, the gun-boat, sole guardian of French honor in these seas, was in Australia for repairs. Eh bien, n’importe! Every Frenchman was a soldier. Did not Napoleon say that? Nom de pipe!”
Wilfrid Baillon, a cow-boy from British Columbia, was standing near me with his arms folded on his breast and a look of stern determination on his sunburned face.
“We must look sharp,” he said to me. “We may all have to stand together, we whites, against these French frog-eaters.”
The tension was extreme. The warrants had not come from the British consul, and there seemed no disposition on the Noa-Noa to save the face of la belle republique, for the blackened and blackguardly stokers still dangled their legs over the rail and made motions which caused the officials to shudder and the ladies to shut their eyes.
The agent of the vessel in Papeete, an American, appeared. He talked long and earnestly with the secretary-general and the first and second, and to lend even a darker color to the scene, the procureur-général, the Martinique black, tall, protuberant, mopping his bald head, took the center of the conclave. Noses were lowered and brought together, feet were stamped, hands were wiggled behind backs, and right along the American, the agent, talked and talked.
They demurred, they spat on the boards, they lifted their hands aloft—and then they ordered the pilot to return to the Noa-Noa, and that vessel, whistling long and relievedly, pointed her nose toward the opening in the reef.
Mon Dieu! the suspense was over. The people melted toward their homes and the restaurants, for it was nearly seven o’clock. I drifted into the knot about the officials.