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 piled her up on Palmerston Island," Dodd announced.

"Who were the owners?" inquired one of the club men.

"O, the usual parties!" returned Loudon,--"Capsicum & Co."

A smile and a glance of intelligence went round the group; and perhaps

<<BackPagesTo menuNext>>