ty in Europe. To make it queerer yet, one of them is here
on this ship, in the second class, and wouldn't dare to speak to
his father without being asked. Of course he's a half-Marquesan--the
son--and looks it. I know them all, and only yesterday I heard Hallman
call his son on the main-deck, away from where any one could see him,
and threaten him with 'putting him back in the jungle, where he came
from,' if he appeared again near the first-class space. I tell you,
I'd hate to be in his hands if I was in his way."

Fictionists who take the South Seas for their scenery too often
paint their characters in one tone--black, brown, or yellow, or even
white. Their bad men are super-villains, and yet there are no men
all bad. I know there are no supermen at all, bad or good, but only
that some men do super acts now and then; none has the grand gesture
at all times. Napoleon had a disgraceful affliction at Waterloo,
which rid him of strength, mental and physical; the thief on the
cross became wistful for an unknown delight.

Hallman had said to me in the smoking-room that he never drank alcohol
or smoked tobacco, because "it took the edge off the game." Now,
a poet might say that, or even a moralist, but he was neither.

That night I walked through the waist of the ship and on to the
promenade-deck of the third-class passengers, where a huddle of
stores, coiled ropes, and riff-raff prevented these poor from taking
any pleasurable exercise. I stood at the taffrail and peered down at
the welter of white water, the foam of the buffets of the whirling
screws, and then at the wide wake, which in imagination went on and
on in a luminous path to the place we had departed from, to the dock
where we had left the debarred lover of nature. The deep was lit
with the play of phosphorescent animalculae whom our passage awoke
in their homes beneath the surface and sent questing with lights for
the cause. A sheet of pale, green-gold brilliancy marked the route
of the Noa-Noa on the brine, and perhaps far back the corpse of the
celestial philosopher floated in radiancy, with his face toward those
skies, so brazen to his desires.

A Swiss with a letter of introduction to me presented it when seven
days out. It was from the manager of a restaurant in San Francisco, and
asked me to guide him in any way I could. The Swiss was middle-aged,
and talked only of a raw diet. He was to go to the Marquesas to eat
raw food. One would have thought a crud