We sat down for dinner.  The dejeuner was repeated, and eggs added for variety.  We had risen from breakfast four hours before, yet there was no lack of appetite.  The drink appeared only to make their gastric juices flow freely.  I hid my surfeit.  The harmonies had by now drawn the girls and young women from other districts, word having been carried by natives passing in carts that a parcel of papaa (non-Tahitians) were faarearea (making merry).

These new-comers had adorned themselves for the taupiti, the public fete, as they considered it, and as they came along the road had plucked ferns and flowers for wreaths.  Without such sweet treasures upon them they have no festal spirit.  There were a dozen of these Moorea girls and visitors from Tahiti, one or two from the Tiare Hotel, whose homes were perhaps on this island.

The dinner being finished, the bandsmen laid down their instruments and the girls were invited to drink.  Tahitian females have no thirst for alcohol.  They, as most of their men, prefer fruit juices or cool water except at times of feasting.  They had no intoxicants when the whites came, not in all Polynesia.  It was the humor of the explorers, the first adventurers, and all succeeding ones, to teach them to like alcohol, and to hold their liquor like Englishmen or Americans.  Kings and queens, chiefs and chiefesses, priests and warriors, were sent ashore crapulous in many a jolly-boat, or paddled their own canoes, after areareas on war-ships and merchantmen.  Some learned to like liquor, and French saloons in Papeete and throughout Tahiti and Moorea encouraged the taste.  Profits, as ever under the business rule of the world overweighed morals or health.

These girls in our bower drank sparingly of wine, but needed no artificial spirits to spur their own.  Music runs like fire through their veins.

Iromea of the Tiare Hotel—­perhaps some of Lovaina’s maidens knew our plans and came over on the packet—­took the accordion from Kelly.  She began to play, and two of the Moorea men joined her, one with a pair of tablespoons and the other with an empty gasolene-can.  The holder of the spoons jingled them in perfect harmony with the accordion, and the can-operator tapped and thumped the tin, so that the three made a singular and tingling music.  It had a timbre that got under one’s skin and pulsated one’s nerves, arousing dormant desires.  I felt like leaping into the arena and showing them my mettle on alternate feet, but a Moorea beauty anticipated me.

She placed herself before the proud Llewellyn, half of her own blood, and began an upaupahura.  She postured before him in an attitude of love, and commenced an improvisation in song about him.  She praised his descent from his mother, his strength, his capacity for rum, and especially his power over women.  He was own brother to the great ones of the Bible, Tolomoni and Nebutodontori, who had a thousand wives.  He drew all women to him.