e
was in the cemetery,--in the plot reserved for the natives of other
islands,--and her babe unborn. She had died alone. I think she made
up her mind to relieve the Englishman of her care, and willed to die
at once. Dr. Cassiou, with whom I visited her, said:

"She ought to have lasted several months. Mais, c'est curieux. I
have treated these Polynesians for many years, and I never found one
I could keep alive when he wanted to die. She had already sent away
her spirit, the ame, or essence vitale, or whatever it is, and then
the body simply grows cold."

Ormsby and I talked it all over in the parc. He was deeply affected,
and he uncovered his own soul, as men seldom do.

"I 'm dam' glad she's dead," he said, with intense feeling. "I might
have failed, and she died before I did fail. I'm going back to Warwick
now at first chance, and whatever I do or don't do, I've got that
exception to my credit. It's one, too, to the credit of the whites
that have cursed these poor islanders."

He had chalked it down on a record he thought quite black, but which
I believe was better than our average. He and I went to the cemetery
and had a wooden slab put up:

Tahia a Atuona
Tamau te maitai.

Tahia of Atuona
She held fast.

The Christchurch Kid and I were friendly, and he allowed me once a day
during his training periods to put on the gloves with him for a mild
four rounds. He was an open-hearted fellow, with a cauliflower ear and
a nose a trifle awry from "a couple of years with the pork-and-beaners
in California," as he explained, but with a magnificent body. He also
lived at the Annexe, and did his training in the garden under Afa's
clever hands. The Dummy must have admired him, for he would watch him
exercising and boxing for hours, and make farcical sounds and grotesque
gestures to indicate his understanding of the motions and blows.

The Kid asked me if I knew Ernest Darling, "the nature man," and
identified the too naked wearer of toga and sandals on the San
Francisco wharf as Darling.

"'E looked like Christ," said the boxer. "'E was a queer un. How'd
you like to chyse up there to his roost in the 'ills?"

The next morning at five--it was not daybreak until six--we met at Wing
Luey's for coffee and bread, which cost four cents. Prince Hinoe was
there as usual, and asked us whither away. He laughed when we told
him, and said the nature men were maamaa, crazy. The Kid was of the
same mind.

We