On the fifth day it became known that the Shan-Shan syndicate of Cantonese had a remaining case of toendstikkers. They claimed that until now they had overlooked this case. It held a hundred packages, or twelve hundred boxes. It was priceless as the sole possible barrier against the absolute ending of the game.
The Shan-Shan people were without heart. They demanded for the case five francs a packet. Many of the younger Marquesans counselled giving the Cantonese a taste of the ancient u'u, the war-club of a previous generation. Desperate as was the plight of the older gamesters, they dared not consent. The governor would return, the law would take its course, and they would go to Noumea to work out their lives for crime. No, they would buy the case for francs, but they would not risk dividing it among many, who would be devoured piecemeal by the diabolical O Lalala.
“Kivi, the Vagabond, the Drinker of kava, is the chief to lead our cause,” said Great Fern. “He has never gone to the Christian church. He believes still in the old gods of the High Place, and he is tattooed with the shark.”
Kivi was the one man who had not played. He cared nothing for the pleasures of the Farani, the foolish whites. After palaver, his neighbors waited on him in a body. They reasoned with him, they begged him. He consented to their plan only after they had wept at their humbling. Then they began to instruct him.
They told him of the different kinds of combinations, of straights and of flushes, and of a certain occasional period when the Tahitian would introduce a mad novelty by which the cards with one fruit on them would “runnee wil'ee.” They warned him against times when without reason the demon would put many matches on the mat, and after frightening out every one would in the end show that he had no cards of merit.
Immediately after sunset, when the popoi and fish had been eaten, and all had bathed in the brook, when the women had perfumed their bodies and put the scarlet hibiscus in their hair, and after Kivi had drunk thrice of kava, the game began. The valley was deserted, the paepaes empty. No fires twinkled from the mountainsides. Only in the cocoanut-grove the candlenuts were lit as the stars peeped through the roof of the world.
A throng surrounded the pair of combatants. The worn cards had been oiled and dried, and though the ominous faces of the tiki upon them shone bravely, doubtless they were weary of strife. The pipe was made to smoke; Kivi puffed it and so did all who had joined in the purchase of the case from the thieves of Cantonese. Then the cards were dealt by Kivi, who had won the cut.
O Lalala and he eyed each other like Japanese wrestlers before the grapple. Their eyes were slits as they put up the ante of five packets each. O Lalala opened the pot for five packets and Kivi, nudged by his backers, feverishly balanced them. He took three cards, O Lalala but one. Standing behind the Tahitian, I saw that he had no cards of value, but coolly he threw thirty packets upon the mat. The others shuddered, for Kivi had drawn deuces to a pair of kings. They made the pipe glow again. They puffed it; they spat; they put their heads together, and he threw down his cards.
Then calmly the Tahitian laid down his own, and they saw that they could have beaten him. They shouted in dismay, and withdrew Kivi, who after some palaver went away with them into the darkness.
One or two candlenut torches dimly illumined the figures of the squatting women who remained. Upon the sugar-cane mat O Lalala stretched himself at ease, closing his eyes. A silence broken only by the stealthy noises of the forest closed upon us. Teata, her dark eyes wide, looked fearfully over her shoulder and crept close to me. In a low voice she said that the absent players had thrown earth over their shoulders, stamped, and called upon Po, the Marquesan deity of darkness, yet it had not availed them. Now they went to make magic to those at whose very mention she shuddered, not naming them.