Steadily the pile of Swedish toendstikkers grew behind him.  All through the night the game raged beneath the light of the candlenuts, in a silence broken only by the hoarse breathing of the crouching brown men, the sandy-sounding rustle of the palm-fronds overhead, and cries of “Ante uppy!” or “Comely center!” When dawn came grayly through the aisles of the grove, they halted briefly to eat a bowl of popoi and to drink the milk of freshly gathered nuts.  O Lalala, relaxing against the heap of his winnings, lifted a shell to his lips and over its rim gave me one enigmatic look.

Whistling softly, I went down to the House of the Golden Bed, breakfasted there without the aid of Exploding Eggs, and then sought the governor.  He had gone by the whale-boat of Special Agent Bauda to an adjoining deserted island to shoot kuku.  Hiva-oa was without a government.

All day the madness raged in the cocoanut-grove.  In the afternoon the vicar apostolic of the Roman Catholic Church, supported by the faithful Deacon Fariuu, himself toiled up the slope to stop the game.  The bishop was received in sullen silence by regular communicants.  A catechist whom he had found squat before the mat paid no attention to his objurgations, save to ask the bishop not to stand behind him, as O Lalala had said that was bad luck.  The churchmen retired in a haughty silence that was unheeded by the absorbed players.

Later the deacon returned, bringing with him the very matches that had been kept in the church to light the lamps at night service.  These he stacked on the sugarcane mat.  The vicar bishop followed him to call down the anathema maranatha of high heaven upon this renegade who had robbed the cathedral and the priests’ house of every toendstikker they had held, and when he had again retired, the deacon, dropping his last box on the woven table, elevated his hands toward the skies and fervently asked the Giver of All Good Things to aid his draw.  But he received a third ace, only to see O Lalala put down four of the damnable bits of paper with three spots on each one.

At three o’clock next morning the game lapsed because the Tahitian had all the counters.  These he sent to his house, where they were guarded by a friend.  For a day he sat waiting by the sugar-cane mat, and the Monte Carlo was not deserted.  O Lalala would not budge to the demands of a hundred losers that he sell back packages of matches for cocoanuts or French francs or any other currency.  Pigs, fish, canned goods, and all the contents of the stores he spurned as breaking faith with the kindly governor, who would recognize that while matches were not gambling stakes, all other commodities were.

On the fourth day the canoes that had paddled and sailed to every other island of the archipelago began to return.  Some brought fifty packets, some less.  Dealers had tossed their prices sky-ward when asked to sell their entire stocks.