much?"

When Lovaina inquired the price, she smiled her sweetest, rubbed
the saleslady's back, and uttered some joke that made her sway with
laughter, so that price became of no importance. But a sour-faced
white or a pompous bureaucrat paid her saving, and Chinese, who kept
the restaurants, invoked the curse of barrenness upon the venders.

The day came for the new scheme of fish-selling to go into effect. The
mayor, a long-bearded and shrewd druggist, had bought up all the
half-way accurate scales in the city, for there had not been a
balance in the market. Everything was by strings, bunches, feels,
and hefts. The fish counters, polished by the guardian of the marche,
were now brilliant with the shiny apparatus.

The long-awaited morning found a crowd peeping through the
railing half an hour earlier than usual. All would have a fill
of delicacies. Lovaina with the Dummy drove down to the Annexe for
me. Vava was making queer signs to her which either were unintelligible
or which she thought absurd. She waved her long forefinger before him,
which meant: "Don't talk foolishness. I am not a fool."

We reached the market-place when only a score or two had gathered.

A thousand devils! there was not a fish on the slabs. The merry wives
were absent. The condition was plain.

The Dummy uttered a demoniacal grunt, and shook his head and hands
before Lovaina in accusation. She answered him with a movement of
her head up and down, which signified acquiescence.

"Dummy know," she said mysteriously. "That Vava he find everything. He
like old-time tahutahu, sorcerer. He tell me Annexe no fish. He say
now no fish till finish those masheen."

She laughed and rubbed my shoulders.

"The fish slip away," she said, "and leave only their scales! Aue!"

M. Lontane, the second in command of the gendarmes, was sent
scouting, and reported to the governor--not the one who originated
the manifesto--that the famine was the result of an organized revolt
against the law and order of the land. Fishermen he had questioned,
replied simply, "Aita faito, paru! Aita hoo, paru!" Which, holy
blue! meant, "No scales, fish! No price, fish!"

What to do? One cannot make a horse drink unless one gives him
red peppers to eat. Even the Government could not make a fisherman
fish for market, as there was a law against enforced labor except as
punishment for crime or in emergencies, such as during the existence
of martial law, the guarding against a