Vanquished Often, who had a vague notion of the greatness of her uncle’s Menike friends, Teddy and Gotali, and of the desirability of an alliance with one of their tribe, approached me softly and rubbed my back in a circle the while she crooned a broken song of the whaling days, concerning the “rolling Mississippi” and the “Black Ball line.”  Seventh Man Who Wallows in the Mire himself began to make concentric circles on my breast with his heavy hand, so that I was beset fore and aft by the most tender and friendly advances of the Marquesan race.  Never was hapless guest in more unfortunate plight.

She was but a child, I said; Americans did not mate with children.  They smiled as at a pleasantry, and again extolled her charms.  Desperately I harked back to the ten commandments in an endeavor to support my refusal by other reasons than distaste or discourtesy, but laughter met my text.  “White man does not follow white man’s tapus,” said my hostess, gently placing my hand in that of Vanquished Often.  The slender fingers clung timorously to mine.  Unhappy Hinatini feared that she was about to be disgraced before her people by the white man’s scorn of her beauty.

I was fain to invent a romance upon the spot.  I was madly enamoured of an Atuona belle, I said.  She waited for me upon my own paepae; she was a mighty woman and swift to anger.  She would wreak vengeance upon me, and upon Vanquished Often.  I would adopt Vanquished Often as my sister.  In token of this I pressed my lips upon her forehead and kissed her hands.  She smiled bewitchingly, pleased by the novel honor.

My hosts and their friends departed with her, half pleased, half puzzled at this latest whimsy of the strange white, and I lay down upon the mats of the chief’s house, with Exploding Eggs lying across the doorway at my feet.

The night brought fitful dreams, and in the darkest hour I woke to feel a frightening thing upon my leg.  By the light of the dimly burning lantern I saw a thousand-leg, reddish brown and ten inches long, halting perhaps for breath midway between my knee and waist.  It seemed indeed to have a thousand legs, and each separate foot made impresses of terror on my mind, while each toe and claw clutched my bare flesh with threatening touch.

The brave man of the tale who saves himself from cobra or rattler by letting the serpent crawl its slow way over his perfectly controlled body might have withheld even a quiver of the flesh, but I am no Spartan.  At my convulsive shudder each horrid claw gripped a death-hold.  In one swift motion I seized a corkscrew that lay nearby, pried loose with a quick jerk every single pede and threw the odious thing a dozen yards.  A trail of red, inflamed spots rose where it had stood and remained painful and swollen for days.

[Illustration:  Idling away the sunny hours]

[Illustration:  Nothing to do but rest all day]

Whether it was because this experience became mixed with my first dreams in beautiful Vait-hua, or whether my Celtic blood sees portents where they do not exist, certain it is that as the stealthy charm of that idyllic place grew upon me through the days something within me resisted it.  I was ever aware that its beauty concealed a menace deadly to the white man who listened too long to the rustle of its palms and the murmur of its stream.