"Curse your black soul!" a voice was saying, with heavy, slow brutality, "when I tell you to drink—you drink! D'y' hear?"
"No can do, Mahrster," came the faltering response, in the broken bêche de mer that is the token of the white man's domination in the islands. "That fella rum taboo 'long me altogether."
"What do I care for your taboo? Drink!"
Fell an interval of silence.
"Drink again—drink hearty!"
Captain Hull Gregson sat leaning forward by the side of his living-room table, shoving down the length of it a glass that brimmed and sparkled redly. On his knee, in a fist like a ham, he balanced a black bottle. His jutted jaw took a line with the outthrust arm, with the lowering brow, as if the whole implacable force and will of the man were so projected.
And at the end, facing him, stood Motauri—a different, a sadly different Motauri. A Motauri not in the least the joyous woodland faun in his attitude now. His proud crest was lowered, stripped of its wreath; his magnificent muscles drooped. He stood humbly, with chest collapsed, on shuffling feet, as became an inferior. He drew the back of his hand across his lips and eyed the white man furtively....
"That's better," grunted Gregson, and leaned back to set the bottle on the table amid a litter of odds and ends, books, papers, a revolver, a tarred tiller-rope with a roseknot. "Perhaps that'll loosen your tongue. First time I ever seen your breed hold off the stuff. But then, you're one of these independent lads, ain't you? Old chief stock, you call yourself. Plenty wild Kanaka, you.... Plenty bold, bad fella you—hey?"
"No, Mahrster," said Motauri, deprecating.
Gregson regarded him with a hard smile.