“It very bes’ the baroness could do in T’ytee,” explained Lovaina.  “She must be bright all about, and she buy and fix rooms.  She have whole top floor Annexe, and spen’ money like gentleman, two or three thousand dollar’ every month.  I wish you know her.  She talk beautiful’, and never one word smut.  Hones’, true.  Johnny, my son, read ‘Three Weeks’ that time, and he speak the baroness, ‘You jus’ like that woman in the book.’  She have baby here and take with her to Paris.  She want that baby jus’ like ‘Three Weeks.’  Oh, but she live high!  She have her own servants, get everything in market, bring peacocks and pheasants and turkeys from America.  How you think?  Dead?  No.  She sen’ man to bring on foot on boat.  You go visit her, she give champagne jus’ like Papenoo River.  She beautiful?  My God!  I tell you she like angel.  She speak French, English, Russian, German, Italian, anything the same.  She good, but she don’t care a dam’ what people say.  When she go ‘way Europe she give frien’s all her thing’.  Now she back in her palace with her baby.  She write once say she come back T’ytee some day by’n’by.  She love T’ytee somethin’ crazee.”

At the Cercle Bougainville Captain William Pincher told me more of the baroness.

“Is the bloody meat-safe still on the back porch?  The baroness made a voyage with me to the Paumotus just for the air.  She sat on deck all the time, rain or shine.  I’d put a’ awnin’ over ’er in fair weather or when it rained and there wasn’t much wind.  She was a bloody good sailor, too, and ate like us, only she never went below except at night.  I give her my cabin.  She’d spen’ hours lookin’ over the side in a calm—­we had no engine—­an’ she’d listen to all the yarns.”

Lying Bill burst out with one of his choicest oaths.

“She wasn’t like some of those ladees I’ve ’ad aboard.  She was a proper salt-water lass.  She loved to ’ear my yarns of the sea.  When she was big with child an’ I ashore, I ’ad the ‘abit o’ droppin’ in o’ afternoons and ‘avin’ a slice of ‘am or chicken out o’ the safe.  Afa ran ’er bloody show for ‘er, an’ it cost ’er a bloody fortune.  I used to lie for ’er to ’ear ‘er laugh.  You know I’m called Lyin’ Bill, but McHenry tells more real lies in a day than I do in a bloody year.  She was the finest-looking girl of the delicate kind I ever saw, all pink and white an’ with fringy clothes an’ little feet.  Oh! there was nothing between us but the sea, an’ I know that subject.”

Lying Bill sighed like a diver just up from the bottom of the lagoon.

“You know that big cocoanut tree in the garden of the Annexe?  She would sit under that with me an’ smoke her Cairo cigarettes an’ talk about her bally kiddie.  She wanted him to be strong an’ to love the sea, and she thought by talking with me about ‘im an’ ships an’ the ocean she could sort of train him that way, though he’d been got in Paris an’ might be a girl.  Is there anything in that bleedin’ idea?  She could quote books all right about it.”