“Sure,” he said, “I’m never happy away from the sound of the surf on the reef and the swish of the cocoanuts.  I was fourteen years in the British army in England when I made up my mind to quit civilization.  I put it to the missus, a London woman, and she was for it.  I’ve had nearly ten years now in the Cook group.  D’ye know, I’ve learned one thing—­that money means very little in life.  Why, in Aitutaki you can’t sell fish.  The law forbids it, but do you suppose people don’t fish on that account?  Why, a man goes out in his canoe and fishes like mad.  He brings in his canoe, and as he approaches the beach he’s blowing his pu, the conch-shell, to let people know he has fish.  Fish to sell or to barter?  Not at all.  He wants the honor of giving them away.  Now, if he makes a big catch, do you see, he has renown.  People say, ‘There’s Taiere, who caught all those fish yesterday.’  That’s worth more to him than money.  But if he could sell those fish, if there was competition, only the small-minded, the business souls, would fish.  I’m not a socialist, but Aitutaki shows that, released from the gain, man will serve his fellows for their plaudits.  And, mind you, no person took more fish than he needed.  There was no greed.”

“That’s rot!” broke in Hallman, who entered the smoking-room.  “The natives are frauds.  You’ve got to kick ’em around or bribe ’em to do any work.  Haven’t I lived with ’em twenty years?  They’re swine.”

“It depends on what you bring them and what you seek,” said McBirney.  “Ah, well, it’s getting too civilized in Raratonga.  There’s an automobile threatening to come there, though you could drive around the island in half an hour.  And they’re teaching the Maoris English.  I must get away to the west’ard soon.  It’s a fact there are two laws for every inhabitant.”

Would I, too, “go native”?  Become enamored of those simple, primitive places and ways, and want to keep going westward?  Would I, too, fish to be honored for my string?  Would I go to the Dangerous Archipelago, those mystic atolls that sent to the Empress Eugenie that magnificent necklace of pearls she wore at the great ball at the Tuileries when the foolish Napoleon made up his mind to emulate his great namesake and make war?  Would I there see those divers who are said to surpass all the mermen of legend in the depths they go in their coral-studded lagoons in search of the jewels that hide in gold-lipped shells?  Was it for me to wander among those fabulous coral isles flung for a thousand miles upon the sapphire sea, like wreaths of lilies upon a magic lake?

The doldrums brought rain before the southeast wind came to urge us faster on our course and to clear the skies.  Now we were in the deep tropics, five or six hundred miles farther south than Honolulu, and plunging toward the imaginary circle which is the magic ring of the men who steer ships in all oceans.  Our breeze was that they pray for when the wind alone must drive the towering trees of canvas toward Australia from America.