We drove through Aapahi and Faaripoo and saw a funeral.  In the grounds of the dead man sat two large groups of people, the men and the women separate.  They talked of his dying and his property, and his children, while those who liked to do so made him ready for the grave.  A hundred yards away, in a school-yard, twoscore men, women, boys, and girls played football.  The males were in pareus, naked except about the waist, and they kicked the heavy leather sphere with their bare feet.

Pare, Arue, and Mahina districts behind us, we were in Papenoo, a straggling village of a few hundred people along the road, the houses, all but the half-dozen stores of the Chinese, set back a hundred yards, and the domestic animals and carts in the front.

With a flourish we drove into the inclosure of the largest, newest, and most pretentious house, and were greeted by Teriieroo, the Tahitian chief, all native, but speaking French easily and musically.  Count Polonsky shook hands with him, as did we all, but when a daughter appeared, neither Polonsky nor we paid her any attention.  Yet she was Polonsky’s “girl,” as they say here, and he kept her in good style in a house near her father’s, sending his yellow automobile for her when he wanted her at his villa near Papeete.

The chief’s house had four bedrooms, each with an European bed, three-quarter size, and with a mattress two feet high, stuffed with kapok, the silky cotton which grows on trees all over Tahiti, These mattresses were beveled, and one must lie in their middle not to slip off.  The coverlets were red and blue in stamped patterns.

It was dark when we touched the earth after two hours’ driving, and leaving the coachman to care for the horses, we went with the chief, each of us carrying a siphon of seltzer or a bottle of champagne or claret.  Our way was through an old and dark cocoanut grove, a bare trail, winding among the trees, and ending at the beach.

Polonsky had had built a pavilion for the revel.  Fifty feet away was a kitchen in which the dinner was cooking, its odors adding appetite to that whetted by the several cocktails which Polonsky had mixed when the ice was brought in a wheelbarrow from the wagon.

We sat down in chairs on the turf a foot from the jetty boulders, and watched the inrush of the breakers.  A light breeze outside had stirred the water, and the combers were white and high.

“Every sea is really three seas,” said McHenry, pipe in hand, as he sipped his Martini.  “We fellows who have to risk our cargoes and lives in landing in the Paumotus and Marquesas, study the accursed surf to find out its rules.  There are rules, too, and the ninth wave is the one we come in on.  That is the last of the third group, the biggest, and the one that will bring your boat near enough to shore to let all hands leap out and run her up away from the undertow.”