the rails, and sentence them to long imprisonments.

So for an hour more the steamship puffed and exhausted her steam,
while the high officials paced the wharf shaking their fists at the
besotted stokers, who shook theirs back.

The stores, closing at five o'clock, sent their quota of clerks
to swell the mob at the quay, and the "rubberneck wagon," alert to
earn fares, took the news of the fray into the country, and hauled in
scores of excited provincials, who had vague ideas that la guerre was
on. The wedding party, only six motor-cars full on the second day,
all in wreaths of tuberoses and wild-cherry rind, the bride still in
her point-lace veil, and the groom and all the guests cheered with
the champagne they had drunk, drove under the shed from the suburbs
and honked their horns, to the horror of the secretary-general and
the others.

The situation was now both disciplinary and diplomatic.

"C'est tres serieux," whispered the secretary to the governor's private
secretary, a dapper little man whose flirting had made his wife a Niobe
and alarmed the husbands and fathers of many French dames et filles.

"Serious, monsieur?" said the private secretary, twisting his black
wisp of a mustache, "it is more than serious now; it is no longer
the French Establishments of Oceania. It is between Great Britain
and France."

A peremptory order was given to drive every one off the quay, and
though the crowd chaffed the police, the sweep of wharf was left free
for the marchings and counter-marchings of the big men.

"What would be the result? Would the entire British population
of the ship resist the taking away of any of the crew? Oh, if the
paltry French administration at Paris had not removed the companies
of soldiers who until recently had been the pride of Papeete! And
crown of misfortune, the gun-boat, sole guardian of French honor in
these seas, was in Australia for repairs. Eh bien, n'importe! Every
Frenchman was a soldier. Did not Napoleon say that? Nom de pipe!"

Wilfrid Baillon, a cow-boy from British Columbia, was standing near me
with his arms folded on his breast and a look of stern determination
on his sunburned face.

"We must look sharp," he said to me. "We may all have to stand
together, we whites, against these French frog-eaters."

The tension was extreme. The warrants had not come from the British
consul, and there seemed no disposition on the Noa-Noa to save the face
of la belle republique, for the