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I looked at him closely. Some gesture, the suggested slant of his brows, the thin lips, reminded me of a certain "son of Ah Cum" who guided me into disaster in Canton, saying, "Mis'r Rud Kippeling he go one time befo'." "Your name?" I asked in hope of confirmation. "O Lalala," he replied, while the smile that started in his eyes was killed by his tightening lips.
But he received a third ace, only to see O Lalala put down four of the damnable bits of paper with three spots on each one. At three o'clock next morning the game lapsed because the Tahitian had all the counters. These he sent to his house, where they were guarded by a friend. For a day he sat waiting by the sugar-cane mat, and the Monte Carlo was not deserted.
Five packs went upon the mat for ante, and Kivi very slowly picked up his cards. He surveyed them, and a grim smile of incredulity and delight spread over his ink-decorated countenance. He opened for ten packets. O Lalala quickly put down as many, and thirty more. Kivi chuckled as one who has his enemy in his hand, but stifles his feelings to hide his triumph.
O Lalala would not budge to the demands of a hundred losers that he sell back packages of matches for cocoanuts or French francs or any other currency. Pigs, fish, canned goods, and all the contents of the stores he spurned as breaking faith with the kindly governor, who would recognize that while matches were not gambling stakes, all other commodities were.
Brands were improvised and hurried home to light the fires for breadfruit-roasting, while Kahuiti laughed scornfully. "A hundred of this tribe I have eaten, and no wonder!" he said as he strode away toward Taaoa. The monopoly of O Lalala was no more. Atuona Valley had turned back the clock of time a hundred years, to destroy the perfect world in which he sat alone.
"We will use only matches for counters. Merci, merci, Monsieur l'Administrateur! You are very good. Please, will you give me now the note to Ah You?" As he limped away with it, the governor poured me an inch of absinthe. "Sapristi!" he exclaimed. "O Lalala! O, la, la, la!" He burst into laughter. "He will play ze bloff?" I spent that evening with Kriech, the German trader of Taka-Uka.
Kivi hesitated, and then, amid the most frightful curses of his company, laid down only a pair of kings, a six, a nine, and a jack. O Lalala, without a smile, disclosed a pair of aces and three meaningless companions. The game was over. The men of Hiva-oa had thrown their last spear. Magic had been unavailing; the demon foreigner could read through the cards.
A blaze of torches lighted a cleared space among the tall palm columns, and in the flickering red glow a score of naked, tattooed figures crouched about a shining mat of sugar-cane. About them great piles of yellow-boxed Swedish matches caught the light, and on the cane mat shone the red and white and black of the cards. O Lalala sat facing me, absorbed in the game.
On his mat in the middle of this golden treasury O Lalala reclined, smoking at his leisure, and smiling the happy smile of Midas. Outside a cold wind swept down from Calvary Peak, and a gray sky hid the sun. I paused in the reek of those innumerable matches, which tainted the air a hundred feet away, and exchanged morning greetings with their owner, inquiring about his plans.
Many dark threats were muttered on the cheerless paepaes and in the dark huts, but in variety of councils there was no unity, and none dared assault alone the yellow-walled hut in which O Lalala smiled among his gains. On the second day there was a growing tension in the atmosphere of the valley. I observed that there were no young men to be seen on the beach or at the traders' stores.
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