In the Track of the Trades / The Account of a Fourteen Thousand Mile Yachting Cruise to the Hawaiis, Marquesas, Societies, Samoas and Fijis

by Lewis R. Freeman

The waiters work noiselessly and expeditiously. There are no orders taken. Each man is noted by the watchful garçon, and to him is instantly brought a large glass of cracked ice and a green bottle. After that, except for occasional replenishings of the ice, he needs no attention.

Before long a change comes over the spirit of the place, a revivification like that which comes to a field of drought-parched wild flowers at the first touch of long-awaited raindrops. Watch it working in that yellow-skinned youth by the darkened window. Plainly a "transfer" from the prison colony at Noumea, he, with the dregs of the pernicious New Caledonian fever still clogging his blood. By the ink on his forefinger you put him down as in some kind of a departmental billet. He slipped through the door but a moment ago and the garçon had his glass of ice and bottle ready on the window ledge almost before he was seated. He spilled the absinthe over the sides of the glass in his eagerness to fill it, and in spite of the cracked ice it still must have been far from the delectable frappé of the conoisseur when he gulped it down. A second pouring of the warm liqueur took up the remaining ice and he has called for more.

But now note him as he waits for his glass to be replenished. Has a spirit hand passed across his brow and smoothed out those lines of weariness and ill-health? Perhaps not, but they are gone nevertheless, and a tinge of colour is creeping into the sallow cheeks. Now he gathers his relaxed muscles and pulls his slender frame together. The thin shoulders are thrown back, the sunken chest expanded, and with open mouth and distended nostrils, like a man who comes from a hot, stuffy hall out into the cool air of the open street, he takes several deep, quick breaths.

You, who know the futility of drinking anything alcoholic or narcotic in endeavouring to keep cool and have, therefore, only sipped your glass of lime juice and soda, can swear that the air of the place, far from growing fresher, is getting closer and hotter every moment. But don't waste your time trying to convince the young man by the window to that effect. It's cooler air to him—yes, and to every one else in the room but yourself with your foolish lime juice and soda. See them sitting up and inhaling it all around you.

You have seen the stolid Britisher thaw out and wax sociable after his first or second brandy-and-soda, and perhaps you expect something of the kind is going to happen here. But no—the brandy-and-soda and the absinthe routes start from the same place, but their directions are diametrically opposite. The brandy-and-soda addictee expands externally, the absinthe drinker expands internally; the one drink strikes out, the other strikes in. The Britisher cannot forget himself until he has had a couple of brandy-and-sodas; with two glasses of absinthe the Frenchman only commences to realize himself. Don't look for any flow of the soul to accompany the flow of the bowl, then; these exiles are only going the absinthe route; they are off for home.

Turn your attention again to the youth by the darkened window. A fresh glass of cracked ice is before him and he is pouring himself another drink. Ah! there is your real absinthe artist now. See with how steady a hand he pours that unvarying thread of a trickle; not faster than that must it go, not slower. See him turn the glass to the light to mark the progress of the green stain in the white body of the cracked ice. As it touches the bottom the pouring stops, the glass is twirled once or twice and then lifted to the lips and drained. Just as much water as a thread-sized trickle of warm absinthe will melt from the ice in finding its way to the bottom of the glass and back to the rim; offer it to him any other way, after those first mad gulps, and he would probably refuse it. Thus absinthe à la Cercle Colonial de Papeete.

At five or half past, an army officer looks at his watch, stretches himself, yawns, pours a final hasty glass and picks his reluctant way to the door and out into the still, stifling air. Two officers of the gunboat follow suit, and from then on till seven o'clock dinner-time, by occasional twos and threes, but for the most part singly, a half, perhaps, of the strange company—at the call of family, military or social duties—takes its departure. The residue—unmarried officers, departmental officials and a few unclassified—is made up of the regular voyageurs; you will find them still in their places when you look in again after dinner.

As you saunter down to the hotel in the gathering twilight, you note that the hot, humid air-body of the afternoon is cut here and there with strata of coolness which, descending from above, are creating numerous erratic little whirlwinds that dodge hither and thither at every turn. In the west hangs the remains of an ugly copper-and-sulphur sunset, in the north is an unbroken line of olive-and-coal-dust clouds, and, even in your inexperience, you hardly need to note the 29.70 reading on the hotel lanai barometer to tell you that there is going to be wind before midnight. The air is vibrant with the thrill of "something coming," and from the waterfront, where they have known what to expect since morning, rises the rattle of winches, the growl of hurried orders and the mellow, rhythmic chanting of natives swaying on anchor chains and mooring lines as the trading schooners are "snugged up" in their berths along the sea-wall.

Nine o'clock at the Cercle Colonial. The jalousies have been opened during your absence and are now being closed again, this time to keep out the scurrying vanguards of the rising wind. The air is cooler now, and you give the waiter the recipe for an American gin fizz, to receive something in return which refuses to fizz and is built, apparently, on a bayrum base. You solace yourself with the thought that you didn't come for a drink, anyway, and turn your attention to your friends of the afternoon, the voyageurs by the absinthe route. Most of them seem to have "arrived" by this time, and if they are aware at all of the relief of the cooling atmosphere, it is only to tell themselves that it is good to breathe again the air of la belle France after those accursed tropics. Each sits solitary, as when you left two hours ago, but where they were then separated by a few scant yards at the most, they are now scattered from Paris to the Riviera, from Chamonix to Trouville.

But it is plain that it is Paris with the most of them. The youth with the yellow face is still in his chair by the window, but his eyes are now fixed admiringly on a coloured lithograph of a ballet dancer—an Illustracion supplement—in its black frame upon the wall. Maybe he's doing the Louvre, you think, and looking at the pictures. But no—look at his eyes. That picture is flesh and blood for him. She's the headliner at the Folies Bergere, and she's coming down to drink with him as soon as the crowd stops those accursed encores and lets her leave the stage. And don't those eyes tell you how well worth waiting for he knows she is?