You could never say the town was quiet; all morning there was a ferment in the air, an aimless movement and congregation of natives in the street.  But it was not before half-past one that a sudden hubbub of voices called us from the house, to find the whole white colony already gathered on the spot as by concerted signal.  The Sans Souci was overrun with rabble, the stair and verandah thronged.  From all these throats an inarticulate babbling cry went up incessantly; it sounded like the bleating of young lambs, but angrier.  In the road his royal highness (whom I had seen so lately in the part of butler) stood crying upon Tom; on the top step, tossed in the hurly-burly, Tom was shouting to the prince.  Yet a while the pack swayed about the bar, vociferous.  Then came a brutal impulse; the mob reeled, and returned, and was rejected; the stair showed a stream of heads; and there shot into view, through the disbanding ranks, three men violently dragging in their midst a fourth.  By his hair and his hands, his head forced as low as his knees, his face concealed, he was wrenched from the verandah and whisked along the road into the village, howling as he disappeared.  Had his face been raised, we should have seen it bloodied, and the blood was not his own.  The courtier with the turban of frizzed hair had paid the costs of this disturbance with the lower part of one ear.

So the brawl passed with no other casualty than might seem comic to the inhumane.  Yet we looked round on serious faces and—­a fact that spoke volumes—­Tom was putting up the shutters on the bar.  Custom might go elsewhere, Mr. Williams might profit as he pleased, but Tom had had enough of bar-keeping for that day.  Indeed the event had hung on a hair.  A man had sought to draw a revolver—­on what quarrel I could never learn, and perhaps he himself could not have told; one shot, when the room was so crowded, could scarce have failed to take effect; where many were armed and all tipsy, it could scarce have failed to draw others; and the woman who spied the weapon and the man who seized it may very well have saved the white community.

The mob insensibly melted from the scene; and for the rest of the day our neighbourhood was left in peace and a good deal in solitude.  But the tranquillity was only local; din and perandi still flowed in other quarters:  and we had one more sight of Gilbert Island violence.  In the church, where we had wandered photographing, we were startled by a sudden piercing outcry.  The scene, looking forth from the doors of that great hall of shadow, was unforgettable.  The palms, the quaint and scattered houses, the flag of the island streaming from its tall staff, glowed with intolerable sunshine.  In the midst two women rolled fighting on the grass.  The combatants were the more easy to be distinguished, because the one was stripped to the ridi and the other wore a holoku (sacque) of some lively colour.  The first was uppermost, her teeth locked in her adversary’s face, shaking her like a dog; the other impotently fought and scratched.  So for a moment we saw them wallow and grapple there like vermin; then the mob closed and shut them in.