We jogged along, and as we approached Fa’a, I lit a match and looked at my watch.  It was nearly two o’clock.  The Dummy stopped the horse at Kelly’s dance-hall in a palm grove.  The building was of bamboo and thatch, with a smooth floor of Oregon pine, and was a former himene house.  Kelly had rented it from the church authorities.  The dancing was over for the night, but a few carts were in the grove, and the lights were bright.  We went inside, and found forty or fifty Tahitians, men and women, squatting or sitting on the floor, while on the platform was Kelly himself, with his accordion on the table.  He saw me and shouted “Ia ora na!” And after a few minutes, while others came, began to speak.  What he said was interpreted by a Frenchman, who, to my astonishment, proved to be the editor of one of those anti-government papers printed in San Francisco, that Ivan Stroganoff had shown me.

Kelly addressed the audience, “Fishermen and fellow stiffs.”  He said that the fish strike was a success, and if they all remained true to one another, they would win, and the scales would be kicked out.  The few scabs who sold fish in the market only made sore those unable to buy.  He said that he had found out that the law applied only to the market-place, and that a plan would be tried of hawking fish from house to house in Papeete.  They would circumvent the governor’s proclamation in that way.  He praised their fortitude in the struggle, and after the editor had interpreted stiffs by te tamaiti aroha e, which means poor children, and scabs by iore, which means rats, and had ended with a peroration that brought many cries of “Maitai!  Good!” Kelly took up his accordion, and began to play the sacred air of “Revive us Again!”

He led the singing of his version: 

    “Hallelujah!  I’m a bum!  Hallelujah!  Bum again! 
    Hallelujah!  Give us a hand-out!  To save us from sin!”

The Tahitians rocked to and fro, threw back their heads, and, their eyes shut as in their religious himenes, chorused joyfully: 

    “Hahrayrooyah!  I’m a boom!  Hahrayrooyah!  Boomagay! 
    Hahrayrooyah!  Hizzandow!  To tave ut fruh tin!”

They sang the refrain a dozen times, and then Kelly dismissed the meeting with a request for “three cheers for the I. W. W.”

There is no “w” in French or in Tahitian, and the interpreter said, “Ruperupe ah-ee dohblevay dohblevay!” And the Tahitians:  “Ai dobbebelly dobbebelly!”

Kelly came down from the platform, his freckled face shining and his eyes serious but twinkling.  He greeted me as the natives lit cigarettes and filed out.

“I’m runnin’ their strike for them,” he said.  “It ’s on the square.  The poor fish!  They don’t make hardly enough to pay for their nets, let alone an honest day’s pay, and they’re up half the night and takin’ chances with the sharks and the devil-fish.  They have to pay market dues and all sorts of taxes.  They ’re good stiffs all right, and every one has a membership card in the I. W. W. applied for.”