Not one of the eleven resident traders came to town, no captain cast anchor in the lagoon, but we saw him ere the hour was out.  This was owing to our position between the store and the bar—­the Sans Souci, as the last was called.  Mr. Rick was not only Messrs. Wightman’s manager, but consular agent for the States; Mrs. Rick was the only white woman on the island, and one of the only two in the archipelago; their house besides, with its cool verandahs, its bookshelves, its comfortable furniture, could not be rivalled nearer than Jaluit or Honolulu.  Every one called in consequence, save such as might be prosecuting a South Sea quarrel, hingeing on the price of copra and the odd cent, or perhaps a difference about poultry.  Even these, if they did not appear upon the north, would be presently visible to the southward, the Sans Souci drawing them as with cords.  In an island with a total population of twelve white persons, one of the two drinking-shops might seem superfluous:  but every bullet has its billet, and the double accommodation of Butaritari is found in practice highly convenient by the captains and the crews of ships:  The Land we Live in being tacitly resigned to the forecastle, the Sans Souci tacitly reserved for the afterguard.  So aristocratic were my habits, so commanding was my fear of Mr. Williams, that I have never visited the first; but in the other, which was the club or rather the casino of the island, I regularly passed my evenings.  It was small, but neatly fitted, and at night (when the lamp was lit) sparkled with glass and glowed with coloured pictures like a theatre at Christmas.  The pictures were advertisements, the glass coarse enough, the carpentry amateur; but the effect, in that incongruous isle, was of unbridled luxury and inestimable expense.  Here songs were sung, tales told, tricks performed, games played.  The Ricks, ourselves, Norwegian Tom the bar-keeper, a captain or two from the ships, and perhaps three or four traders come down the island in their boats or by the road on foot, made up the usual company.  The traders, all bred to the sea, take a humorous pride in their new business; ‘South Sea Merchants’ is the title they prefer.  ’We are all sailors here’—­’Merchants, if you please’—­’South Sea Merchants,’—­ was a piece of conversation endlessly repeated, that never seemed to lose in savour.  We found them at all times simple, genial, gay, gallant, and obliging; and, across some interval of time, recall with pleasure the traders of Butaritari.  There was one black sheep indeed.  I tell of him here where he lived, against my rule; for in this case I have no measure to preserve, and the man is typical of a class of ruffians that once disgraced the whole field of the South Seas, and still linger in the rarely visited isles of Micronesia.  He had the name on the beach of ’a perfect gentleman when sober,’ but I never saw him otherwise than drunk.  The few shocking and savage traits of the Micronesian