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Updated: May 3, 2025
Murphy had already fooled away three weeks in Papeete and if the captain of the port hearkened to the request from the man from Noumea it would mean a wait of another three weeks. Consequently he awaited the next move with interest.
Several became ministers; others accepted high government positions for life; some handled millions of francs; two were at Noumea; one preached in the pulpit of Notre Dame. One afternoon in October the little parlor was full; the end of the summer vacation had brought back the habitues, and for the first time the number was nearly large enough to open a profitable discussion.
She felt to-night, lying in the harbour of Noumea, as she had felt sometimes during a furious sirocco in Sicily restless, unnerved, fearful of some vague evil, though common sense assured her that nothing of the kind she dimly pictured could possibly happen.
The ship was a stolen ship; the stores, whether from initial carelessness or ill administration during the voyage, were insufficient to carry them to any port except back to Papeete; and there retribution waited in the shape of a gendarme, a judge with a queer-shaped hat, and the horror of distant Noumea. Upon that side there was no glimmer of hope.
I bet you never were there, and saw those white, shaved men, in their dust clothes and straw hats, prowling around in gangs in the lamplight at Noumea; they look like wolves, and they look like preachers, and they look like the sick; Hulsh is a daisy to the best of them. Well, there's your company. They're waiting for you, Herrick, and you got to go; and that's a prophecy.
This good, solid peasant stock, of which France possesses so much, makes the best colonists, and as a rule they succeed far better than those who come to the tropics with the idea of making a fortune in a few years without working for it. These fall into the hands of the big Nouméa companies, and have the greatest trouble in getting out of debt.
The great liners flashing along their policed and humdrum lanes, have long since abandoned London, but every turn of the tide brings up her fleet of cargo ships, straggling, weather-worn and grey, trudging in from ports far-flung and incredible Surinam, Punta Arenas, Antofagasta, Port Banana, Tang-chow, Noumea, Sarawak.
When Blake Shorland stepped from the steamer Belle Sauvage upon the quay at Noumea, he proceeded, with the alertness of the trained newspaper correspondent, to take his bearings. So this was New Caledonia, the home of outcast, criminal France, the recent refuge of Communist exiles, of Rochefort, Louise Michel, Felix Rastoul, and the rest!
If I could only send that pig of an engineer to Noumea I should be a happy man! If wishes could have wafted him, he would have gone farther than New Caledonia long before. One day, far on in the summer, this engineer actually appeared upon the canal in his steam yacht, and there was great excitement in the country. The peasants left their work in the fields and ran to the banks to gaze at him.
Not only do these firms lend money at exorbitant interest, but they stipulate that the planter will sell them all his produce and buy whatever he needs from them, and as they fix prices as they please, their returns are said to reach 30 per cent. Besides these two kinds of French settlers, there is a third, which comes from the penitentiary in Nouméa or its neighbourhood.
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