"What does he say to that, Mynheer?"
"He says, 'Do you take me for an Italian?'
"Then I will say: 'No; you see you are too tired. Also you are too soft. You are a criminal. That's natural to you. But you think of police. You have a wish, say. Well my dear sir, but would you kill a man—three—ten men—to have that wish? No, you are too tired, and you must have the police. But here there are no police. I am the police. Why do you not kill me? Ha-ha-ha! Then you could take my property. Then you would "make big," as you say. My dear sir, that is a "hunch!" That is "sure fire!" Ha-ha-ha!'—Then I will kick him out in his coolie cotton pants."
After coffee the trader said: "One gallon of the Hollands which you sent me ashore has disappeared. The kitchen boys are 'careless.' Also I wink one eye when a schooner arrives. Of course they will dance tonight, however. You would care to go up, my dear sir?"
Of course we went. There's no other amusement in an islet like Taai but the interminable native dance. The Dutchman led the way up a narrow, bushy ravine, guiding me by sound rather than by sight.
"Up this same very path," I heard him, "has gone one uncle of mine. They pulled him to the advance with one rope around his arms. Then they cut him up and ate him. But that was many years ago, my dear sir. Now I am the law. Maybe there shall come, now and then, a Dutch gunboat to have a look-in. I raise up that flag. The captain shall dine with me. All is good. But, my dear sir, I am the law."
The "music" began to be heard, a measured monotone of drums, a breath of voices in a recitative chant, slightly impassioned by that vanished gallon. The same old thing, indeed; one of the more than fifty-seven varieties of the island hula. Then that had died away.
The light from the "place" grew among the higher leaves. And the trader, becoming visible, halted. I saw him standing, listening.
"No, my dear sir, but that is a new thing."
He started forward. He stopped again. I heard it now. Out of the familiar, hollow tautophony of drumbeats there began to emerge a thread of actual melody—an untraditional rise and fall of notes—a tentative attack as it were, on the chromatic scale of the west. No he-goat's skin stretched on bamboo would do that.