the island for a few days on an excursion,
and the gay scientist who opened the champagne in his pockets at the
Tiare Hotel New Year's eve was in command. He sat in an arm-chair in a
littered office and was smoking a pipe. His beard had a diameter of a
foot, and obviated any need of collar or shirt-band, for it grew from
his shoulder-blades up, so that his forehead, eyes, nose, and lips
were white islands in a black sea, and even his nose was not bare,
for he had been debited by Lovaina for his champagne as "Hair on nose."

He was reading a novel, and asked gruffly what we were there for. I
told him, and Baillon was assigned a room at twelve francs a day,
and was required to pay for ten days in advance.

The next morning I visited him. He could speak no French, so I
questioned Blackbeard in his office, where we had an aperitif. He
was voluble.

"He has amoeban dysentery," said he. "It is contagious and infectious,
specifically, and it is fortunate your friend is attended by me. I
have had that disease and know what's what."

I, too, had had it in the Philippine Islands, and I was amazed that
it was infectious. How could he have got it?

"Alors," replied the physician, "where has he taken meals?"

"Lovaina's, Fanny's, and some with the Chinese."

The Frenchman threw his arms around the door in mock horror. He gagged
and spat, exciting the cowboy into a fever.

"Oh! la! la!" he shouted. "Les Chinois! Certainement, he is ill. He has
eaten dog. Amoeban dysentery! Mais, monsieur, it is a dispensation
of the bon dieu that he has not hydrophobia or the leprosy. Les
Chinois! Sacre nom de chien!"

Lovaina had often accused her rivals, the Chinese restaurateurs, of
serving dog meat for beef or lamb. Perhaps it was so, for in China
more than five millions of dogs are sold for food in the market every
year, and in Tahiti I knew that the Chinese ate the larvae of wasps,
and M. Martin had mountain rats caught for his table.

The cow-boy's room was bare and cheerless, but two Tahitian girls of
fourteen or fifteen years of age were in it. One was sitting on his
bed, holding his hand, and the other was in a rocking-chair. They
were very pretty and were dressed in their fete gowns. The girl on
the bed was almost white, but her sister fairly brown. Probably they
had different fathers. They told me that they had seen Baillon on
the streets, had fallen in love with him, and though they had never
spoken to him, wanted to comfort