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The midnight darkness of the enclosing grove and the vague columns of the palms, upholding the rustling canopy that hid the sky, hinted at some monstrous cathedral where heathen rites were celebrated. I pushed through the fringe of onlookers, none of whom heeded me, and found Apporo and Exploding Eggs holding torches. The madness of play was upon them.
The crash of a falling cocoanut awakened me at midnight, and I saw on my paepae Apporo, Flower, Water, and Chief Kekela Avaua, asleep. The chief had hung his trousers over the railing, and was in his pareu, his pictured legs showing, while the others lay naked on my mats.
Her entire trunk seemed to revolve on the pivot of her waist, her hips twisting in almost a spiral, and her arms akimbo accentuating and balancing her lascivious mobility. The governor and the commissionaire, Ah Yu and Apporo, Monsieur Bapp with Song of the Nightingale and Flag, made the palace tremble while the thrum of the great drums maddened their blood.
O Lalala appeared to sleep, though when Apporo attempted to withdraw a card he pinned it with his crutch. It was half an hour before the players returned. Kivi crouched to his place without a word, and the others arranged themselves behind him in fixed array, as though they had a cabalistic number-formation in mind.
And as fast as they arrived, O Lalala won them. We hastened into my cabin, and Apporo was beneath the Golden Bed ere the rays of my lantern fell upon the floor. The packets had disappeared. "Exploding Eggs!" cried Apporo, her dark eyes tolling in rage. "But he is honest," I objected. In such a crisis, she muttered, all standards were naught.
What is that?" She was Apporo, wife of Puhei, Great Fern, she said, and she owned a house in which her father, a Chinaman, had recently died. This house she earnestly desired to give me in exchange for the golden bed, and we struck a bargain. I was to live in the house of Apporo and, on departing, to leave her the bed. Great Fern, her husband, was called to seal the compact.
It was the practical joke of those days. I had seen Apporo, my landlady, staggering homeward a few days earlier in a pitiful state of intoxication. Some one had given her a glass of mixed absinthe, vermuth, and rum, and with confidence in the giver she had tossed it down.
The sad placidity of every day was gone; as in the throes of the dance they kept their gleaming eyes upon the fluctuations of fortune before them. Twice I spoke sharply before they heard me, and then in a frenzy of supplication Apporo threw herself upon me. Would I not give her matches the packets of matches that were under the Golden Bed?
We have put in a proclamation and in church services and the slaughter of turkeys what these children do in dancing, as did Saul of old. The season's task completed, Great Fern and Apporo sat back well content, having provided excellently for the future.
Working in this fashion, Great Fern and his neighbors carried down to the popoi pit perhaps four hundred breadfruit daily, piling them there to be prepared by the women. Apporo and her companions busied themselves in piercing each fruit with a sharp stick and spreading them on the ground to ferment over night.
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