A schooner swung at her moorings near by, under a glowing, flamboyant tree, and her crew was aboard in expectation of sailing at any hour.  Another small craft, a sloop, was preparing to sail for Moorea, also.  She was crowded with passengers and cargo, and all about the rail hung huge bunches of feis, the mountain bananas.  Most of the people aboard had come from the market-place with fruit and fish and vegetables to cook when they arrived at home.  A strange habit of the Tahitians under their changed condition is to take the line of least resistance in food, eating in Chinese stores, or buying bits in the market, whereas, when they governed themselves, they had an exact and elaborate formula of food preparation, and a certain ceremoniousness in despatching it.  Only feasts bring a resumption nowadays of the ancient ways.

The crews of the schooner and of the other Moorea boat besides our own had a swarm of friends awaiting the casting off.  Even a journey of a few hours meant a farewell ceremony of many minutes.  They embrace one another and are often moved to tears at a separation of a few days.  When one of them goes aboard a steamship for America or Australasia, the family and friends enact harrowing scenes at the quay.  They are sincerely moved at the thought of their loved ones putting a long distance between them, and I saw a score of young and old sobbing bitterly when the Noa-Noa left for San Francisco though they stormed the stokers lustily when aroused.  Their life is so simple in these beloved islands that the dangers of the mainland are exaggerated in their minds, and to the old the civilization of a big city appears as a specter of horrible mien.  The electric cars, the crowds, the murders they read of and are told of, the bandits in the picture-shows, the fearful stranglers of Paris, the lynchers, the police, who in the films are always beating the poor, as in real life, the pickpockets, and the hospitals where willy-nilly they render one unconscious and remove one’s vermiform appendix—­all these are nightmares to the aborigines whose relations are departing.

When heads were counted, Landers’s was missing, and jumping into Llewellyn’s carriage, an old-fashioned phaeton, I drove to Lovaina’s, where he occupied the room next to mine in the detached house in the animal-yard.  He was sound asleep, having played poker and drunk until an hour before; but when I awoke him I could not but admire the serenity of the man.  His body was in the posture in which he had lain down, and his breathing was as a child’s.

“Landers, get up!” I shouted from the doorway.  He opened his eyes, regarded me intently, and without a word went to the shower-bath by the camphor-wood chest, returned quickly, and dressed himself.  I fancied him a man who would have answered his summons before a firing-squad as calmly.  He had a perfection of ease in his movements; not fast, for he was very big, but with never an unnecessary gesture nor word.  He was one of the finest animals I had ever seen, and fascinating to men and women of all kinds.