here. They were brought here by odious labor contractors, and died
of homesickness. Those men murdered hundreds of them to gain un
pen d'argent, a handful of gold. Eh b'en, those who did it have
suffered. They have faded away, and most of their evil money,
too. Aue!"

Llewellyn's dark face as he protested against Lying Bill's sarcastic
statement of guilt came before me.

To lighten the thought of the princess I told her the thread of
"The Bottle Imp," and that the magic bottle had disappeared out of
the story right there, by the old calaboose. She was glad that the
white sailor who did not care for life had saved the Hawaiians.

Framed in the door of a rough cabin I saw McHenry. He was in pajamas,
barefooted, and unshaven. I recalled that he had an "old woman"
there. Llewellyn had reproved him for speaking contemptuously of
her as beneath him socially. I waved to McHenry, who nodded charily,
and pulled down the curtain which was in lieu of a door. The shack
looked bare and cheap, as if little money or effort had been spent
upon it. Perhaps, I thought, McHenry could afford only the drinks and
cards at the Cercle Bougainville and economized at home. He did not
reappear, but a comely native woman drew back the curtain, and stood
a moment to view us. She was large, and did not look browbeaten, as
one would have supposed from McHenry's boast that he would not permit
her even to walk with him except at a "respectful distance." Of course
I knew him as a boaster.

The church of the curious Josephite religion was near by, and in the
mission house attached to it I saw the American preachers of the sect.

"What do they preach?" I asked Noanoa Tiare.

"Those missionaries, the Tonito? Oh, they speak evil of the Mormons. I
do not know how they speak of God." She laughed. "I am not interested
in religions," she explained. "They are so difficult to understand. Our
own old gods seem easier to know about."

We had arrived at the part of the beach into which the broad avenue
of Fautaua debouched.

The road was beside the stream of Fautaua, and arching it were
magnificent dark-green trees, like the locust-trees of Malta. This
avenue was in the middle of the island, and looking through the
climbing bow of branches I saw Maiauo, the lofty needles of rock
which rise black-green from the mountain plateau and form a tiara,
Le Diademe, of the French. A quarter of an hour's stroll brought us
to a natural basin into which the stream fell