a friend."

I shuddered, but Landers leaned over the table and said to me,
sotto voce:

"McHenry's tellin' his usual bloody lie. Brown got the vanilla
all right, but what he did was to have the bloomin' Chink consign
it to him proper', and not give him a receipt. Then he denied all
knowledge of it, and it bein' all the bleedin' Chinaman had, he died
of a broken heart--with maybe too many pipes of opium to help him on a
bit. McHenry and Pincher are terrible liars. They call Pincher 'Lyin'
Bill,' though I 'd take his word in trade or about schooners any day."

I had been introduced to a Doctor Funk by Count Polonsky, who told
me it was made of a portion of absinthe, a dash of grenadine,--a
syrup of the pomegranate fruit,--the juice of two limes, and half
a pint of siphon water. Dr. Funk of Samoa, who had been a physician
to Robert Louis Stevenson, had left the receipt for the concoction
when he was a guest of the club. One paid half a franc for it, and
it would restore self-respect and interest in one's surroundings when
even Tahiti rum failed.

"Zat was ze drink I mix for Paul Gauguin, ze peintre sauvage, here
before he go to die in les isles Marquises," remarked Levy, the
millionaire pearl-buyer, as he stood by the table to be introduced
to me.

"Absinthe seul he general' take," said Joseph, the steward.

"I bid fifty thousand francs for one of Gauguin's paintings in Paris
last year," Count Polonsky said as he claimed his game of ecarte
against Tati, the chief of Papara district. "I failed to get it,
too. I bought many here for a few thousand francs each before that."

"Blow me!" cried Pincher, the skipper of the Morning Star. "'E was a
bleedin' ijit. I fetched 'im absinthe many a time in Atuona. 'E said
Dr. Funk was a bloomin' ass for inventin' a drink that spoiled good
Pernoud with water. 'E was a rare un. 'E was like Stevenson 'at wrote
'Treasure Island.' Comes into my pub in Taiohae in the Marquesas
Islands did Stevenson off'n his little Casco, and says he, ''Ave
ye any whisky,' 'e says, ''at 'asn't been watered? These South Seas
appear to 'ave flooded every bloomin' gallon,' 'e says. This painter
Gauguin wasn't such good company as Stevenson, because 'e parleyvoud,
but 'e was a bloody worker with 'is brushes at Atuona. 'E was cuttin'
wood or paintin' all the time."

"He was a damn' fool," said Hallman, who had come in to the Cercle
to take away Captain Pincher. "I lived close to him at Atuona all
the tim