He knew McHenry, for both had been in these seas half their lives.

“In all my sixty years,” he said, “I have not been assaulted quite so viciously.  I asked him for what he owed me, and the next I knew he was shutting out the light with his fists.  I will go to the gendarme for a contravention against that villain.  And right now I will fix him in my book.”

“Why, who hit you, and what did you do?” asked McHenry.

“That damned Londoner, Hobson,” said McTavish.  “He was my guest here several years ago, and ate and drank well for a month or two when he hadn’t a sou marquis.  I needed a little money to-day, and meeting him up the road, I demanded my account.  He is thirty years younger than me, and I would have kept my eyes, but he leaped at me like a wild dog, and knocked me down and pounded me in the dirt.”

I sympathized with McTavish, though McHenry snickered.  The Scot went into an inner room and brought back a dirty book, a tattered register of his guests.  He turned a number of pages—­there were only a few guests to a twelvemonth—­and, finding his assailant’s name, wrote in capital letters against it, “Thief.”

“There,” he said with a magnificent gesture.  “Let the whole world read and know the truth!”

He set out a bottle of rum and several glasses, and we toasted him while I looked over the register.  Hardly any one had neglected to write beside his name tributes to the charm of the place and the kind heart of McTavish.

Charmian and Jack London’s signatures were there, with a hearty word for the host, and “This is the most beautiful spot in the universe,” for Moorea and Urufara.

There were scores of poems, one in Latin and many in French.  Americans seem to have been contented to quote Kipling, the “Lotus Eaters,” or Omar, but Englishmen had written their own.  English university men are generous poetasters.  I have read their verses in inns and outhouses of many countries.  Usually they season with a sprig from Horace or Vergil.

“I’m goin’ to the west’ard,” said McTavish.  “There are too many low whites comin’ here.  When Moorea had only sail from Tahiti, the blackguards did not come, but now the dirty gasolene boat brings them.  I must be off to the west’ard, to Aitutaki or Penrhyn.”

Poor Mac! he never made his westward until he went west in soldier parlance.

McHenry, on our way back to Faatoai, said: 

“McTavish is a bloody fool.  He gives credit to the bleedin’ beach-combers.  If I meet that dirty Hobson, I’ll beat him to a pulp.”

From under the thatched roof of our bower came the sounds of: 

    Faararirari
        to oe Tamarii Tahiti
        La Li.

The himene was in its hundredth encore.  The other barrel of bottled beer had been securely locked against the needs of the morrow, and the bandsmen’s inspiration was only claret or sauterne, well watered.