Llewellyn was only a quarter Tahitian, but at times the island blood was the only pulse he felt.  One noticed it especially during the himenes, when he seemed to wander far from the business in hand.  That business being poker, and Landers all attention to the cards and the psychology of his antagonists, every time Llewellyn harked to the himene he lost a little, and when he became entangled in a jackpot of size, and drew too many cards on account of his abstraction, he was mulcted of fifty francs and failed of winning the two hundred he might have won.

“Unlucky at cards, lucky in something else,” said he, self-consolingly.

“Ye want to drop that other thing when ye’re playing cards,” McHenry advised as he scooped in the pot.  “The cards are all queens to you.”

Chief Teriieroo a Teriieroterai sat ten feet removed from the players, but kept his eyes on the money.  They played with notes, five francs being the smallest, and the others twenties and hundreds.  The chief smiled whenever Count Polonsky drew in a heap of these, and when one fell on the floor, he scrambled under the table to prevent it being blown on the rocks.  The Javanese served the drinks, and a crowd of natives watched curiously the shifting vantages from a respectful distance.

It was three o’clock when the scores were settled, and, the chief leading with a lantern, we tramped through the great cocoanut-grove to his residence.

Landers and I each took a bed, I being warned to be forehanded by my experience in Moorea, where I slept on the floor.  The chief retired, and Polonsky went off with his arm about his inamorata’s waist, she having apparently awaited his return.  When Llewellyn and McHenry appeared half an hour later, having emptied a bottle reminiscent to McHenry of his father’s liking for Auld Reekie, they were discomfited by the beds being all occupied, the other two having been early claimed by two men who ate and drank and immediately slept.

When I awoke, the sun was up half an hour, and Landers and I went for a bath in the brook.  We found a pool famed in the legends of the natives.  In the olden days the kings and chiefs would have made it tabu to themselves.

Landers had on a pareu only, his two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle a refreshing sight, and his eyes as bright as if he had had the prescribed eight hours.  They looked at him, sighingly, the young women of the village, even at this hour busied cooking breadfruit or fish and coffee; and Landers flirted with each one and in Tahitian called out words which made them laugh, and sometimes hide their heads coquettishly.

“I dated them all,” he said to me when we were under the water.  We threw off our garments at the edge of the pool and plunged in.  The water was as soft as milk and as clear as crystal, cool and invigorating.  I drank my fill of it as I swam.

Breakfast we had in the chief’s house, the remains of the amuraa rahi of the night before.  The chief drank coffee with us, and when we had gone to sit on the veranda, his eight children and wife took the board.  I talked with Teriieroo a Teriieroterai for half an hour in French.  He was thirty-eight years old, very engaging, and had several grandchildren.