Aue! nom de poisson! within a day the market became a wailing-place.  There were no fish.  The tables daily covered with them were empty.  The happy wives and consorts who had been wont to sell the catch of the men remained in their homes, and the fishers themselves were there or idle on the streets.  The districts around the island, which for decades had despatched by the daily diligence, or by special vehicle or boat, the drafts of the village nets, sent not a fin.  Never in Tahiti’s history except when war raged between clans, or between Tahitians and French, had there been such a fish famine.

And, name of a dog! it was due to a greve, a strike.  It came upon the Papeete people like a tidal wave out of the sea, or like a cyclone that devastates a Paumotu atoll, but, entre nous, it had been brooding for months.  Fish had been getting dearer and dearer for a long time, and householders had complained bitterly.  They recalled the time when for a franc one could buy enough delicious fish for a family feast.  They called the taata hara, the native anglers, cochons, hogs, and they discussed when they gathered in the clubs, or when ladies met at market, the weakness of the authorities in allowing the extortion.  But nothing was done.  The extortion continued, and the profanity increased.  At the Cercle Bouganville Captain Goeltz and the other retired salts banged the tables and said to me: 

“Sacre redingote! is it that the indigenes pay the governor or give him fish free?  Are we French citizens to die of hunger that savages may ride in les Fords?”

They shouted for Doctor Funks, and drank damnation to the regime that let patriots surfer to profit les canaques.  But, in reality, the governor months ago had secretly begun a plan to help them.

One day the governor, his good lady being gone to visit at Raiatea, had given his cook three francs to buy fish for the dejeuner at the palace.  When they came on the table, a bare bite for each of the company, the governor had called in the chef.

“Mais, I gave you three francs for the fish, n’est-ce pas?”

“Mais, vous don’ lai moi t’ree franc, oui, oui,” answered the Chinese.  “Moi don’lai canaque po po’sson.”

The governor had led in the chorus of sacres and diables.  All at the table were of the redingote family, all feeding from the national trough at Paris, and they had the courage and power to end the damnable imposition on the slender purses of Papeete citizens.  Sapristi! this robbery must cease.  He must go slow, however.  Being an honest and unselfish man, he investigated and initiated legislation so carefully and tardily that the remedy for the evil was applied only four days ago.  He had returned to France, so one could not say that he consulted his own purse; but the present governor, an amiable man and a good bridge-player, also liked fish, and they pay no bonanza salaries, the French.  The fishermen had known, of course, of the approaching end of their piracy, but, like Tahitians, waited until necessity for action.  The official paper in which all laws are published had the ordinance set out in full.  Translated, briefly, from the French, it ran like this: