ts former state) as a
"Paradise of naked women" for the resident whites. It was at least a
platonic Paradise, where Lothario ventured at his peril. Since 1860,
fourteen whites have perished on a single island, all for the same
cause, all found where they had no business, and speared by some
indignant father of a family; the figure was given me by one of their
contemporaries who had been more prudent and survived. The strange
persistence of these fourteen martyrs might seem to point to monomania
or a series of romantic passions; gin is the more likely key. The poor
buzzards sat alone in their houses by an open case; they drank; their
brain was fired; they stumbled towards the nearest houses on chance; and
the dart went through their liver. In place of a Paradise the trader
found an archipelago of fierce husbands and of virtuous women. "Of
course if you wish to make love to them, it's the same as anywhere
else," observed a trader innocently; but he and his companions rarely so
choose.

The trader must be credited with a virtue: he often makes a kind and
loyal husband. Some of the worst beachcombers in the Pacific, some of
the last of the old school, have fallen in my path, and some of them
were admirable to their native wives, and one made a despairing widower.
The position of a trader's wife in the Gilberts is, besides, unusually
enviable. She shares the immunities of her husband. Curfew in Butaritari
sounds for her in vain. Long after the bell is rung and the great island
ladies are confined for the night to their own roof, this chartered
libertine may scamper and giggle through the deserted streets or go down
to bathe in the dark. The resources of the store are at her hand; she
goes arrayed like a queen, and feasts delicately every day upon tinned
meats. And she who was perhaps of no regard or station among natives
sits with captains, and is entertained on board of schooners. Five of
these privileged dames were some time our neighbours. Four were handsome
skittish lasses, gamesome like children, and like children liable to
fits of pouting. They wore dresses by day, but there was a tendency
after dark to strip these lendings and to career and squall about the
compound in the aboriginal _ridi_. Games of cards were continually
played, with shells for counters; their course was much marred by
cheating; and the end of a round (above all if a man was of the party)
resolved itself into a scrimmage for the counters. The fifth