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French naval officers and sailors passed and repassed, or sought the obscurity of the mangoes or the acacias. One heard the sibilance of kisses, the laughter, and the banter, the half-serious blows and scoldings of the vahines who repelled over-bold sailors.

Captain Pincher lit his pipe, and the glasses were refilled. McHenry attempted to pick up the thread of the tragedy, and began: "Me, too, I'm with Bill drivin' the Fetia for Nuka-Hiva when David croaks himself. I drank as much as he did ashore, and I 'm no slouch with the vahines; but I can hold my booze, I can."

The bachelors and male coquets of the Tahitians and French, with a sprinkling of all the foreigners in Papeete, the officers and crews of the war-ship Zélée and sailing vessels, smoked and endeavored to segregate vahines who appealed to them.

In this building all the pomp and circumstance of the Nations in Tahiti had been on parade, kings and queens of the island had pleaded and submitted, admirals and ensigns had whispered love to dusky vahines, and the petty wars of Oceanic had been planned between waltzes and wines.

The two vahines, according to the way of vahines, got together in a discussion and examination of feminine fripperies, while Tehei and I, manlike, went over fishing-tackle and wild-pig-hunting, to say nothing of the device whereby bonitas are caught on forty-foot poles from double canoes. Charmian admired a sewing basket the best example she had seen of Polynesian basketry; it was hers.