Fragrance of the Jasmine was in a long and clinging tunic of pale blue, with low, white shoes disclosing stockings also of blue, and wore a hat of pandanus weave.  She carried nothing, nor had I anything in my hands, and we were to be gone all day.  I regretted that I had not lingered longer with Prince Hinoe over the rolls and coffee.

We fared past the merchants’ stores, the Cercle Bougainville, and the steamship wharf, and over the Pont de l’Est, or Eastern bridge, to Patutoa.  The princess pointed out to me many wretched straw houses, crowded in a hopeless way.  They were like a refugee camp after a disaster, impermanent, uncomfortable, barely holding on to the swampy earth.  One knew the occupants to be far from their own Lares and Penates.

“Those are the habitations of people of other islands,” she said.  “The people of the Paumotus, the Australs, and of Easter Island settled there.  They were brought here by odious labor contractors, and died of homesickness.  Those men murdered hundreds of them to gain un pen d’argent, a handful of gold.  Eh b’en, those who did it have suffered.  They have faded away, and most of their evil money, too.  Aue!”

Llewellyn’s dark face as he protested against Lying Bill’s sarcastic statement of guilt came before me.

To lighten the thought of the princess I told her the thread of “The Bottle Imp,” and that the magic bottle had disappeared out of the story right there, by the old calaboose.  She was glad that the white sailor who did not care for life had saved the Hawaiians.

Framed in the door of a rough cabin I saw McHenry.  He was in pajamas, barefooted, and unshaven.  I recalled that he had an “old woman” there.  Llewellyn had reproved him for speaking contemptuously of her as beneath him socially.  I waved to McHenry, who nodded charily, and pulled down the curtain which was in lieu of a door.  The shack looked bare and cheap, as if little money or effort had been spent upon it.  Perhaps, I thought, McHenry could afford only the drinks and cards at the Cercle Bougainville and economized at home.  He did not reappear, but a comely native woman drew back the curtain, and stood a moment to view us.  She was large, and did not look browbeaten, as one would have supposed from McHenry’s boast that he would not permit her even to walk with him except at a “respectful distance.”  Of course I knew him as a boaster.

The church of the curious Josephite religion was near by, and in the mission house attached to it I saw the American preachers of the sect.

“What do they preach?” I asked Noanoa Tiare.

“Those missionaries, the Tonito?  Oh, they speak evil of the Mormons.  I do not know how they speak of God.”  She laughed.  “I am not interested in religions,” she explained.  “They are so difficult to understand.  Our own old gods seem easier to know about.”

We had arrived at the part of the beach into which the broad avenue of Fautaua debouched.