or the asking the coin will be given in
exchange?"

Only the strong authority of Uiliami had prevented the burning of the
traders' houses. As it was, one of Grief's copra-sheds went up in smoke
and was duly charged by Ieremia to the king's account. Ieremia himself
had been abused and mocked, and his spectacles broken. The skin was
off Willie Smee's knuckles. This had been caused by three boisterous
soldiers who violently struck their jaws thereon in quick succession.
Captain Boig was similarly injured. Peter Gee had come off undamaged,
because it chanced that it was bread-baskets and not jaws that struck
him on the fists.

Tui Tulifau, with Sepeli at his side and surrounded by his convivial
chiefs, sat at the head of the council in the big compound. His
right eye and jaw were swollen as if he too had engaged in assaulting
somebody's fist. It was palace gossip that morning that Sepeli had
administered a conjugal beating. At any rate, her spouse was sober,
and his fat bulged spiritlessly through the rips in Willie Smee's silk
shirt. His thirst was prodigious, and he was continually served with
young drinking nuts. Outside the compound, held back by the army, was
the mass of the common people. Only the lesser chiefs, village maids,
village beaux, and talking men with their staffs of office were
permitted inside. Cornelius Deasy, as befitted a high and favoured
official, sat near to the right hand of the king. On the left of the
queen, opposite Cornelius and surrounded by the white traders he was
to represent, sat Ieremia. Bereft of his spectacles, he peered
short-sightedly across at the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In turn, the talking man of the windward coast, the talking man of the
leeward coast, and the talking man of the mountain villages, each backed
by his group of lesser talking men and chiefs, arose and made oration.
What they said was much the same. They grumbled about the paper money.
Affairs were not prosperous. No more copra was being smoked. The people
were suspicious. To such a pass had things come that all people wanted
to pay their debts and no one wanted to be paid. Creditors made a
practice of running away from debtors. The money was cheap. Prices were
going up and commodities were getting scarce. It cost three times the
ordinary price to buy a fowl, and then it was tough and like to die
of old age if not immediately sold. The outlook was gloomy. There were
signs and omens. There was a plague of rats