ahu. Will
you not yourself show me Fautaua?"

She gave a shrill cry of delight, and in the frank, sweet way of the
Tahitian girl replied:

"We will run away to-morrow morning. Wear little, for it will be warm,
and bring no food!"

"I will obey you literally," I said, "and you must find manna or
charm ravens to bring us sustenance."

I had coffee opposite the market place in the shop of Wing Luey, and
chatted a few moments with Prince Hinoe, the son of the Princesse
de Joinville, who would have been king had the French not ended
the Kingdom of Tahiti. No matter what time Hinoe lay down at night,
he was up at dawn for the market, for his early roll and coffee and
his converse with the sellers and the buyers. There once a day for
an hour the native in Papeete touched the country folk and renewed
the ancient custom of gossip in the cool of the morning.

The princess--in English her familiar Tahitian name, Noanoa Tiare,
meant Fragrance of the Jasmine--was in the Parc de Bougainville,
by the bust of the first French circumnavigator.

"Ia ora na!" she greeted me. "Are you ready for adventure?"

She handed me a small, soft package, with a caution to keep it safe
and dry. I put it in my inside pocket.

The light of the sun hardly touched the lagoon, and Moorea was still
shrouded in the shadows of the expiring night. As we walked down the
beach, the day was opening with the "morning bank," the masses of
white clouds that gather upon the horizon before the tradewind begins
its diurnal sweep, to shift and mold them all the hours till sunset.

Fragrance of the Jasmine was in a long and clinging tunic of pale
blue, with low, white shoes disclosing stockings also of blue, and
wore a hat of pandanus weave. She carried nothing, nor had I anything
in my hands, and we were to be gone all day. I regretted that I had
not lingered longer with Prince Hinoe over the rolls and coffee.

We fared past the merchants' stores, the Cercle Bougainville, and
the steamship wharf, and over the Pont de l'Est, or Eastern bridge,
to Patutoa. The princess pointed out to me many wretched straw
houses, crowded in a hopeless way. They were like a refugee camp
after a disaster, impermanent, uncomfortable, barely holding on to
the swampy earth. One knew the occupants to be far from their own
Lares and Penates.

"Those are the habitations of people of other islands," she said. "The
people of the Paumotus, the Australs, and of Easter Island settled
t