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Updated: June 4, 2025
I had been introduced to a Doctor Funk by Count Polonsky, who told me it was made of a portion of absinthe, a dash of grenadine, a syrup of the pomegranate fruit, the juice of two limes, and half a pint of siphon water. Dr. Funk of Samoa, who had been a physician to Robert Louis Stevenson, had left the receipt for the concoction when he was a guest of the club.
"I bid fifty thousand francs for one of Gauguin's paintings in Paris last year," Count Polonsky said as he claimed his game of écarté against Tati, the chief of Papara district. "I failed to get it, too. I bought many here for a few thousand francs each before that." "Blow me!" cried Pincher, the skipper of the Morning Star. "'E was a bleedin' ijit. I fetched 'im absinthe many a time in Atuona.
Jones, the husband, head of a book company in Los Angeles; a Barbary Coast singer and her man; a demirep of Chicago and her loved one; three Tahitian youths with wreaths; the post-office manager, and with him the surgeon of the hospital; a notary's clerk, the governor's private secretary; the administrateur of the Marquesas Islands, Margaret, Lurline and Mathilde, Lena, and Lucy, lovely part-Tahitian girls who clerked in stores; the Otoman, chauffeur for Polonsky; English tourists; Nance, the California capitalist; and others.
Fifty feet away was a kitchen in which the dinner was cooking, its odors adding appetite to that whetted by the several cocktails which Polonsky had mixed when the ice was brought in a wheelbarrow from the wagon. We sat down in chairs on the turf a foot from the jetty boulders, and watched the inrush of the breakers.
It was suspected really that he was short of clothes, with perhaps only one or two cotton suits, and that when those were soiled he had to resort to full dress during the laundering. While David and I inspected the house and grounds, McHenry and Llewellyn sat at the wine. Polonsky had a curious and wisely chosen household.
But at his command they hunted, for he had that which they craved, the money of civilization, to buy its toys and poisons. Polonsky had a reputation for generous dealing. A bent native man repairing the road near Faaripoo had his face swathed in bandages. He greeted us with the courteous, "Ia ora na!" but did not lift his head. "He is a leper," said Llewellyn.
We were an odd company: Llewellyn, a Welsh-Tahitian; Landers, a British New-Zealander; McHenry, Scotch-American; Polonsky, Polish-French; Schlyter, the Swedish tailor; David, an American vanilla-grower; "Lying Bill," English; and I, American. There was little talk at breakfast. They were trenchermen beyond compare, and the dishes were emptied as fast as filled.
Magnificent semi-savages, clothed in only a rag, their powerful muscles responsive to every demand of their minds, and health glowing in their laughing countenances: Polonsky, slight, bent, baldish, arrayed in Paris fashions, a figure from the Bois de Boulogne, his glass screwed in his weak eye, the other myopic, teeth missing, and face pale.
My heart leaps at their sight when long away. They are the dearest result of seed and earth. I drink their wine and esteem dwelling in their sight a rare communion with the best of nature. They joked Count Polonsky about his girl, and he began to explain. "I was here a year before I found one that suited me," he said as he rode beside the wagon.
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