Inside the doorway a French nun in blue robes tugged at a rope depending from the belfry, and above us the bells rang out from two tiny towers.  She looked curiously at me and my savage companion, her pale peasant’s face hard, homely, unhealthy; then she kicked at a big dog who was trying to drink the holy water from the clam-shell beside the door. “Allez, Satan!” she said.

The benetier, large enough to immerse an infant, was fixed to a board, a fascinating, blackened old bracket, carved with the instruments of torture, the nails, the spear, the scourge, and thorns.  Ivory and pearl, stained by a century or more, were inlaid.  As I dipped my hand in the shell a huge lizard that made his nest in the hollow of the bracket ran across my knuckles.

Within, there were seats with kneeling-planks, hewed out of hard wood and still bearing the marks of the adze.  Upon them the congregation soon assembled, the women on one side, the men on the other.  The women wore hats, native weaves in semi-sailor style, decorated with Chinese silk shawls or bright-colored handkerchiefs.  All were barefooted except the pale and sickly daughters of Baufre, who wore clumsy and painful shoes.  Many Daughters, the little, lovely leper, came with Flower, of the red-gold hair, the Weaver of Mats, who had her names tattooed on her arm.  They dipped in the font and genuflected, then bowed in prayer.

Many familiar faces I recognized.  Ah Yu, the Chinaman who owned the little store beyond the banian-tree and had murder upon his soul; Lam Kai Oo, my erstwhile landlord; Flag, the gendarme; Water, in all the glory of European trousers; Kake, with my small namesake on her arm.  The old women were tattooed on the ears and neck in scrolls, and their lips were marked in faint stripes.  The old men, their eyes ringed with tattooing, wore earrings and necklaces of whale’s teeth.

The church was painted white inside, with frescoes and dados of gaudy hues, and windows of brilliantly colored glass.  The altar, as also the statues of Joseph and Mary, had a reredos handsomely carved.  Outside the railing was a charming Child in the Manger, lying on real straw, surrounded by the Virgin, Joseph, the Magi, the shepherds, and the kings, all in bright-hued robes, and pleasant-looking cows and asses with red eyes and green tails.

The singing began before the priest came from the sacristy.  The men sang alone and the women followed, in an alternating chant that at times rose into a wail and again had the nasal sound of a bag-pipe.  The Catholic chants sung thus in Marquesan took on a wild, barbaric rhythm that thrilled the blood and made the hair tingle on the scalp.

Bishop David le Cadre appeared in elegant vestments, his eyes grave above a foot-long beard, and the mass began.  The acolyte was very agile in a short red cassock, below which his naked legs, and bare feet showed.  The people responded often through the mass, rising, sitting down, and kneeling obediently.  Baufre sat on a chair in the vestibule and added accounts.