ts. I had sinned, I could never learn how, against
some point of observance; and though I was drily thanked, my offerings
were left upon the beach. But our worst mistake was a slight we put on
Toma, Hoka's adoptive father, and in his own eyes the rightful chief of
Anaho. In the first place, we did not call upon him, as perhaps we
should, in his fine new European house, the only one in the hamlet. In
the second, when we came ashore upon a visit to his rival, Taipi-kikino,
it was Toma whom we saw standing at the head of the beach, a
magnificent figure of a man, magnificently tattooed; and it was of Toma
that we asked our question: "Where is the chief?" "What chief?" cried
Toma, and turned his back on the blasphemers. Nor did he forgive us.
Hoka came and went with us daily; but, alone I believe of all the
countryside, neither Toma nor his wife set foot on board the _Casco_.
The temptation resisted it is hard for a European to compute. The flying
city of Laputa moored for a fortnight in St. James's Park affords but a
pale figure of the _Casco_ anchored before Anaho; for the Londoner has
still his change of pleasures, but the Marquesan passes to his grave
through an unbroken uniformity of days.

On the afternoon before it was intended we should sail, a valedictory
party came on board: nine of our particular friends equipped with gifts
and dressed as for a festival. Hoka, the chief dancer and singer, the
greatest dandy of Anaho, and one of the handsomest young fellows in the
world--sullen, showy, dramatic, light as a feather and strong as an
ox--it would have been hard, on that occasion, to recognise, as he sat
there stooped and silent, his face heavy and grey. It was strange to see
the lad so much affected; stranger still to recognise in his last gift
one of the curios we had refused on the first day, and to know our
friend, so gaily dressed, so plainly moved at our departure, for one of
the half-naked crew that had besieged and insulted us on our arrival:
strangest of all, perhaps, to find, in that carved handle of a fan, the
last of those curiosities of the first day which had now all been given
to us by their possessors--their chief merchandise, for which they had
sought to ransom us as long as we were strangers, which they pressed on
us for nothing as soon as we were friends. The last visit was not long
protracted. One after another they shook hands and got down into their
canoe; when Hoka turned his back immediately upon