The justice of facts is strange, and strangely just; Nakaeia, the author of these deeds, died at peace discoursing on the craft of kings; his tool suffers daily death for his enforced complicity.  Not the nature, but the congruity of men’s deeds and circumstances damn and save them; and Tebureimoa from the first has been incongruously placed.  At home, in a quiet bystreet of a village, the man had been a worthy carpenter, and, even bedevilled as he is, he shows some private virtues.  He has no lands, only the use of such as are impignorate for fines; he cannot enrich himself in the old way by marriages; thrift is the chief pillar of his future, and he knows and uses it.  Eleven foreign traders pay him a patent of a hundred dollars, some two thousand subjects pay capitation at the rate of a dollar for a man, half a dollar for a woman, and a shilling for a child:  allowing for the exchange, perhaps a total of three hundred pounds a year.  He had been some nine months on the throne:  had bought his wife a silk dress and hat, figure unknown, and himself a uniform at three hundred dollars; had sent his brother’s photograph to be enlarged in San Francisco at two hundred and fifty dollars; had greatly reduced that brother’s legacy of debt and had still sovereigns in his pocket.  An affectionate brother, a good economist; he was besides a handy carpenter, and cobbled occasionally on the woodwork of the palace.  It is not wonderful that Mr. Corpse has virtues; that Tebureimoa should have a diversion filled me with surprise.

CHAPTER III—­AROUND OUR HOUSE

When we left the palace we were still but seafarers ashore; and within the hour we had installed our goods in one of the six foreign houses of Butaritari, namely, that usually occupied by Maka, the Hawaiian missionary.  Two San Francisco firms are here established, Messrs. Crawford and Messrs. Wightman Brothers; the first hard by the palace of the mid town, the second at the north entry; each with a store and bar-room.  Our house was in the Wightman compound, betwixt the store and bar, within a fenced enclosure.  Across the road a few native houses nestled in the margin of the bush, and the green wall of palms rose solid, shutting out the breeze.  A little sandy cove of the lagoon ran in behind, sheltered by a verandah pier, the labour of queens’ hands.  Here, when the tide was high, sailed boats lay to be loaded; when the tide was low, the boats took ground some half a mile away, and an endless series of natives descended the pier stair, tailed across the sand in strings and clusters, waded to the waist with the bags of copra, and loitered backward to renew their charge.  The mystery of the copra trade tormented me, as I sat and watched the profits drip on the stair and the sands.