The oval shed was full of men sitting cross-legged.  The king was there in striped pyjamas, his rear protected by four guards with Winchesters, his air and bearing marked by unwonted spirit and decision; tumblers and black bottles went the round; and the talk, throughout loud, was general and animated.  I was inclined at first to view this scene with suspicion.  But the hour appeared unsuitable for a carouse; drink was besides forbidden equally by the law of the land and the canons of the church; and while I was yet hesitating, the king’s rigorous attitude disposed of my last doubt.  We had come, thinking to photograph him surrounded by his guards, and at the first word of the design his piety revolted.  We were reminded of the day—­the Sabbath, in which thou shalt take no photographs—­and returned with a flea in our ear, bearing the rejected camera.

At church, a little later, I was struck to find the throne unoccupied.  So nice a Sabbatarian might have found the means to be present; perhaps my doubts revived; and before I got home they were transformed to certainties.  Tom, the bar-keeper of the Sans Souci, was in conversation with two emissaries from the court.  The ‘keen,’ they said, wanted ‘din,’ failing which ‘perandi.’  No din, was Tom’s reply, and no perandi; but ‘pira’ if they pleased.  It seems they had no use for beer, and departed sorrowing.

‘Why, what is the meaning of all this?’ I asked.  ’Is the island on the spree?’

Such was the fact.  On the 4th of July a feast had been made, and the king, at the suggestion of the whites, had raised the tapu against liquor.  There is a proverb about horses; it scarce applies to the superior animal, of whom it may be rather said, that any one can start him drinking, not any twenty can prevail on him to stop.  The tapu, raised ten days before, was not yet re-imposed; for ten days the town had been passing the bottle or lying (as we had seen it the afternoon before) in hoggish sleep; and the king, moved by the Old Men and his own appetites, continued to maintain the liberty, to squander his savings on liquor, and to join in and lead the debauch.  The whites were the authors of this crisis; it was upon their own proposal that the freedom had been granted at the first; and for a while, in the interests of trade, they were doubtless pleased it should continue.  That pleasure had now sometime ceased; the bout had been prolonged (it was conceded) unduly; and it now began to be a question how it might conclude.  Hence Tom’s refusal.  Yet that refusal was avowedly only for the moment, and it was avowedly unavailing; the king’s foragers, denied by Tom at the Sans Souci, would be supplied at The Land we Live in by the gobbling Mr. Williams.