nd when man-eating was referred to, and he laughed a
low, cruel laugh, part boastful, part bashful, like one reminded of
some dashing peccadillo, my repugnance was mingled with nausea. This is
no very human attitude, nor one at all becoming in a traveller. And,
seen more privately, the man improved. Something negroid in character
and face was still displeasing; but his ugly mouth became attractive
when he smiled, his figure and bearing were certainly noble, and his
eyes superb. In his appreciation of jams and pickles, in his delight in
the reverberating mirrors of the dining cabin, and consequent endless
repetition of Moipus and Mata-Galahis, he showed himself engagingly a
child. And yet I am not sure; and what seemed childishness may have been
rather courtly art. His manners struck me as beyond the mark; they were
refined and caressing to the point of grossness, and when I think of the
serene absent-mindedness with which he first strolled in upon our party,
and then recall him running on hands and knees along the cabin sofas,
pawing the velvet, dipping into the beds, and bleating commendatory
"_mitais_" with exaggerated emphasis, like some enormous over-mannered
ape, I feel the more sure that both must have been calculated. And I
sometimes wonder next, if Moipu were quite alone in this polite
duplicity, and ask myself whether the _Casco_ were quite so much admired
in the Marquesas as our visitors desired us to suppose.

I will complete this sketch of an incurable cannibal grandee with two
incongruous traits. His favourite morsel was the human hand, of which he
speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness. And when he said
good-bye to Mrs. Stevenson, holding her hand, viewing her with tearful
eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation in the falsetto of
Marquesan high society, he wrote upon her mind a sentimental impression
which I try in vain to share.

PART II

THE PAUMOTUS

CHAPTER I

THE DANGEROUS ARCHIPELAGO--ATOLLS AT A DISTANCE

In the early morning of 4th September a whale-boat manned by natives
dragged us down the green lane of the anchorage and round the spouting
promontory. On the shore level it was a hot, breathless, and yet crystal
morning; but high overhead the hills of Atuona were all cowled in cloud,
and the ocean-river of the trades streamed without pause. As we crawled
from under the immediate shelter of the land, we reached at last the
limit of their influence. The wind fell