“No stakes!” he said.
“Mais, non! Not a sou!” the lame man promised. “We will use only matches for counters. Merci, merci, Monsieur l'Administrateur! You are very good. Please, will you give me now the note to Ah You?”
As he limped away with it, the governor poured me an inch of absinthe.
“Sapristi!” he exclaimed. “O Lalala! O, la, la, la!” He burst into laughter. “He will play ze bloff?”
I spent that evening with Kriech, the German trader of Taka-Uka. Over our Hellaby beef and Munich beer we talked of copra and the beautiful girls of Buda-Pesth, of the contemplated effort of the French government to monopolize the island trade by subsidizing a corporation, and of the incident of the afternoon.
“The Herr Doktor is new,” said Kriech, with a wag of his head. “That O Lalala! I have heard that that poker iss very dansherous. That Prince Hanoi of Papeite lose his tam headt to a Chinaman. Something comes of this foolishnesses!”
At midnight I had again gained the House of the Golden Bed and had lain down to sleep when on the breeze from up the valley there came a strangely familiar sound to my upper ear. I sat up, listening. In the dark silence, with no wind to rustle the breadfruit and cocoanut-trees, and only the brook faintly murmuring below, I heard a low babble of voices. No word was distinguishable, not even the language, yet curiously the sound had a rhythm that I knew.
I have heard from a distance preaching in many languages. Though only the cadences, the pauses, and rhythm reached me, I had no difficulty in knowing their origin and meaning. Thought casts the mold of all speech. Now my drowsy mind harked back to American days, to scenes in homes and clubs.
I rose, and wrapping the loin-cloth about me, set out with a lantern in search of that sound. It led me down the trail, across the brook, and up the slope into the dense green growth of the mountain-side. Beyond I saw lights in the cocoanut-grove of Lam Kai Oo.
My bare feet made no noise, and through the undergrowth I peered upon as odd a sight as ever pleased a lover of the bizarre. A blaze of torches lighted a cleared space among the tall palm columns, and in the flickering red glow a score of naked, tattooed figures crouched about a shining mat of sugar-cane. About them great piles of yellow-boxed Swedish matches caught the light, and on the cane mat shone the red and white and black of the cards.