t-come and light-go, passionate and forgetful, like
children, and all the time South Pacific, that is to say unmalicious
and good-tempered.
When a steamship was in port the Tiare was a hurly-burly. Perhaps
forty or even a hundred extra patrons came for meals or drinks. It
was amusing to hear their uncomprehending anger at their failure to
obtain quick service or even a smile by their accustomed manner toward
dark peoples. The British, who were the majority of the travelers,
have a cold, autocratic attitude toward all who wait upon them,
but especially toward those of the colored races. In Tahiti they
suffered utter dismay, because Tahitians know no servitude and pay
no attention to sharp words.
I saw a red-faced woman giving an order for aperitifs to To Sen,
the Chinese waiter.
"Two old-fashioned gin cocktails," she iterated. "You savee, gin
and bitters? Be sure it's Angostura, and lemon and soda, and two
Manhattans with rye whisky. Hurry along now! Old-fashioned, remember!"
In ten minutes Temanu came for the order. To Sen knew no English,
and Temanu only, "Yais, ma darleeng," and "Whatnahell?"
"Spik Furanche?" she begged.
"Oui, oui!" said the red-faced lady. "Dooze cocktail! Vous savez
cocktail, a la mode des ancients? Gin, oon dash bittair, lem' et soda!"
"Mais, madame, douze cocktail!" and the half-caste Chinese girl
held up all her fingers and added two more. "Vous n'etes que quatre
ici! Quatre cocktails, n'est-ce pas?"
"Dooze gin, dooze Manhattan? My heavens! They ought to
understand my French in this out-of-the-way place when they do in
Paris. Listen! Dooze is two in French," and she held up two pudgy
fingers. But Temanu was gone and returned with four cocktails made
after her own liking.
All the girls, Atupu, Iromea, Pepe, Maru, Tetua, and Mme. Rose
and Mama-Maru, helped in the service, some beginning with shoes and
stockings, but soon slipping them off as the crowd grew and their feet
became weary. Lovaina herself moved happily about the salle-a-manger
telling her friends that she was a grandmother. A letter had given the
information that her daughter had a child. She was a doting parent, and
we all must toast the newborn. Two grave professors of the University
of California, ichthyologists or entomologists, sat entranced at the
unconventionality of the scene, drinking vin ordinaire and gazing
at the Tahitian girls, or eating breadfruit, raw fish, and taro,
as if they were on Mars and did no
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