A dozen island schooners swayed in the gentle breeze, their stays humming softly, their broadsides separated from the quays by just a dozen or twenty feet, as if they feared to risk the seduction of the land, and felt themselves safer parted from the shore.  On all the street-level verandas, the entrances to the shops and the restaurants, the hundreds of natives who had not wanted other lodging slept as children in cradles until they should rise for coffee before the market-bell.

From the Chinese shop at the corner the strains of a Canton actor’s falsetto, with the squeak of the Celestial fiddles issued from a phonograph, but so real I fancied I was again on Shameen, listening over the Canton River to the noises of the night, the music, and the singsong girls of the silver combs.

I went on, and met the peanut-man.  He sold me two small bags of roasted goobers for eight sous.  He wore the brown, oilskin-like, two-piece suit of the Chinese of southern China, and he had no teeth and no hair, and his eyes would not stay open.  He had to open them with his fingers, so that most of the time he was blind; but he counted money accurately, and he had a tidy bag of silver and coppers strapped to his stomach.  He looked a hundred years old.

When I paid for the two bags, he raised his lids, believed that I was a speaker of English, and said, “Fine businee!”

As I went past the queen’s palace, the two mahus were chanting low, as they sat on the curbing, and they glanced coquettishly at me, but asked only for cigarettes.  I gave them a package of Marinas, made in the Faubourg Bab-el-oued, in Algiers, and they said “Maruru” and “Merci” in turn and in unison.  Strange men these, one bearded and handsome, the other slender and in his twenties, their dual natures contrasting in their broad shoulders and their swaying hips, their men’s pareus and shirts, and bits of lace lingerie.  I met them half a dozen times a day, and as I was now known as a resident, not the idler of a month, they bowed in hope of recognition.

In the Annexe all was quiet, but in the great sailing canoe of Afa, on the grass by the water, there were two girls smoking and humming, and waiting for the cowboy and the prize-fighter who lived beside me, and who were dancing to-night at Fa’a.  Like Indians, these Tahitians, especially the women, would sit and watch and wait for hours on hours, and make no complaint, if only their dear one—­dear mayhap for only a night—­came at last.

I was awakened from happy sleep by the cries of a frightened woman, confused with outlandish, savage sounds.  I lit my lamp and leaned over the balcony.  Under a flamboyant-tree was a girl defending herself from the attack of Vava.  She was screaming in terror, and the Dummy, a giant in strength, was holding her and grunting his bestial laugh.  I threw the rays full in his face, and he looked up, saw me, and ran away up the beach, yelping like a frustrated beast.  In voice and action he resembled an animal more than any human I had ever seen.  The guilelessness and cunning of child and fiend were in his dumb soul.