could have achieved nothing."

"And what was that?"

He stopped, somewhat dramatically, and stretched out his arm.

"Belief in God. Without that we should have been lost."

Then we arrived at the house of Dr. Coutras.

Chapter LV

Mr. Coutras was an old Frenchman of great stature and
exceeding bulk. His body was shaped like a huge duck's egg;
and his eyes, sharp, blue, and good-natured, rested now and
then with self-satisfaction on his enormous paunch. His
complexion was florid and his hair white. He was a man to
attract immediate sympathy. He received us in a room that
might have been in a house in a provincial town in France, and
the one or two Polynesian curios had an odd look. He took my
hand in both of his -- they were huge -- and gave me a hearty
look, in which, however, was great shrewdness. When he shook
hands with Capitaine Brunot he enquired politely after
<i Madame et les enfants>. For some minutes there was an
exchange of courtesies and some local gossip about the island,
the prospects of copra and the vanilla crop; then we came to
the object of my visit.

I shall not tell what Dr. Coutras related to me in his words,
but in my own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any
impression of his vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant
voice, fitted to his massive frame, and a keen sense of the
dramatic. To listen to him was, as the phrase goes, as good
as a play; and much better than most.

It appears that Dr. Coutras had gone one day to Taravao in
order to see an old chiefess who was ill, and he gave a vivid
picture of the obese old lady, lying in a huge bed, smoking
cigarettes, and surrounded by a crowd of dark-skinned retainers.
When he had seen her he was taken into another room
and given dinner -- raw fish, fried bananas, and chicken --
<i que sais-je>, the typical dinner of the <i indigene> --
and while he was eating it he saw a young girl being driven
away from the door in tears. He thought nothing of it, but
when he went out to get into his trap and drive home, he saw
her again, standing a little way off; she looked at him with a
woebegone air, and tears streamed down her cheeks. He asked
someone what was wrong with her, and was told that she had
come down from the hills to ask him to visit a white man who
was sick. They had told her that the doctor could not be
disturbed. He called her, and himself asked what she wanted.
She told him that Ata had sent her, she