my shoulder. It
was the trader's. It was the face of a man who has lived a very long
while wielding power of life and death over unsatisfying satisfactions.
A man awakened! The toppling of a hundred centuries, indeed.

The other was Signet's. Scarred by leaf shadows, thrust like a swimmer's
from the meager sea of heads and naked shoulders, it held as still as a
death mask, minute by minute, except that, in the penumbra cast by the
veil of goat tuft on his chin, the Adam's apple was convulsed at
intervals, as if he were swallowing, as if the man were _drinking_!

The night grew. The torches were consumed, the "place" deserted.
Somewhere the amazing voyagers had taken themselves to rest. A half moon
mutilated the island--long stripes of palms, shadow scars of defiles,
mottles of bushes. It was like a sleeping animal, a tiger of deep blue
and blue-white, an enormous leopard.

We sat on the veranda at the Residence, the trader and I. By and by,
soft-footed, Signet was there, occupying the lowermost step.

The Dutchman talked. Like the able administrator he was, he had already
all the data to be procured. Into his ears had poured the whispered
trickles of a score of informants.

"You are right, my dear sir. Marquesan. You have been there?"

"No."

"She is called in Polynesian, 'Queen Daughter.' My people, who know
nothing as a rule, of course--but they tell me the woman is in actuality
the daughter of a queen. But what is a Kanaka queen? After all, Signet,
my dear sir, down there, what is one queen, out here?"

The trader was obviously in a good humor. He had not been excited for
years. The man was alive. I've said he was like a Spaniard in that he
could be diabolical without getting red in the face. Diabolically
devious and strategic! Before he resumed he blew three mouthfuls of
cigar smoke out into the moonlight, where they burst from the shadow
under the roof like mute cannon shots, round and silvery. Beneath them,
from the step, Signet's eyes were fixed upon the trader's face, dry,
rapt, glazed with some imperious preoccupation.

"But they tell me this woman has danced in a great many islands. She
will go from here to another island to dance. The three men are her
husbands. But she is no wife. A maid, that woman! They have the
hardihood to tell me that. Ha-ha-ha! But, then, she is daughter to a
queen. With those 'husbands' she crosses a hundred leagues of sea in her
sailing canoe. That royal canoe! To dance at