he commandant himself, to the man whom he was then
contending with at billiards--a trader from the next island, honorary
member of the club, and once carpenter's mate on board a Yankee
war-ship--to the doctor of the port, to the Brigadier of Gendarmerie, to
the opium farmer, and to all the white men whom the tide of commerce,
or the chances of shipwreck and desertion, had stranded on the beach of
Tai-o-hae, Mr. Loudon Dodd was formally presented; by all (since he was
a man of pleasing exterior, smooth ways, and an unexceptionable flow of
talk, whether in French or English) he was excellently well received;
and presently, with one of the last eight bottles of beer on a table
at his elbow, found himself the rather silent centre-piece of a voluble
group on the verandah.

Talk in the South Seas is all upon one pattern; it is a wide ocean,
indeed, but a narrow world: you shall never talk long and not hear the
name of Bully Hayes, a naval hero whose exploits and deserved extinction
left Europe cold; commerce will be touched on, copra, shell, perhaps
cotton or fungus; but in a far-away, dilettante fashion, as by men
not deeply interested; through all, the names of schooners and their
captains, will keep coming and going, thick as may-flies; and news
of the last shipwreck will be placidly exchanged and debated. To a
stranger, this conversation will at first seem scarcely brilliant; but
he will soon catch the tone; and by the time he shall have moved a
year or so in the island world, and come across a good number of the
schooners so that every captain's name calls up a figure in pyjamas or
white duck, and becomes used to a certain laxity of moral tone which
prevails (as in memory of Mr. Hayes) on smuggling, ship-scuttling,
barratry, piracy, the labour trade, and other kindred fields of human
activity, he will find Polynesia no less amusing and no less instructive
than Pall Mall or Paris.

Mr. Loudon Dodd, though he was new to the group of the Marquesas, was
already an old, salted trader; he knew the ships and the captains; he
had assisted, in other islands, at the first steps of some career of
which he now heard the culmination, or (vice versa) he had brought
with him from further south the end of some story which had begun in
Tai-o-hae. Among other matter of interest, like other arrivals in
the South Seas, he had a wreck to announce. The John T. Richards, it
appeared, had met the fate of other island schooners.

"Dickinson p