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Updated: May 29, 2025
Und come here you, MacBride, mit your red het, und you, Ludwig Wolfen, and you Tom Devine, und you Charley de Buis, you wicked damdt devil, und you, Tom Denison, you saucy Australian boy, mit your curlt moustache and your svell vite tuck suit; und led us join our hands together, and agree to have no more quarrellings und no more angry vorts.
Being aware of the fact that, from trade jealousies, there had hitherto been a somewhat notorious bitterness of feeling between my German fellow-trader and the two Americans, I shook his hand warmly, said that I was delighted to see that he could forgive and forget, and that I should that moment send my boat across the lagoon to Devine and Charley de Buis with a written invitation, and ask them to favour us with their company; also, that as Mrs Charley who was a Samoan half-caste girl was skilled in baking bread, perhaps she would lend Mesdames MacBride, Wolfen and Huysmans her assistance in making a Christmas cake, the size of which should cause the native population to sit up and respect us as men of more than ordinary intelligence and patriotism.
Donald, she said, wanted to have a 'hakkise'; so we bought a nanny-goat from Ludwig Wolfen, the German trader at Molok, and one evening the 23rd of December I helped Sera to drive and drag the unsuspecting creature home to her husband's place to the slaughter.
Meanwhile, Wolfen, a fat, good-hearted Teuton, with a face like a full moon in a fog, called upon me, and remarked in a squashy tone of voice, superinduced by too many years of lager beer, and its resultant adipose tissue, that he and Peter Huysmans, his neighbour, would feel very much hurt if we did not invite them to participate in the festivities.
MacBride, Mrs MacBride and I received them the moment they stepped out of the boats, and then Ludwig Wolfen, who was disposed in the background with an accordion, and seated on a gin case, played 'The Star Spangled Banner, to the accompaniment of several native drums, beaten by his wife and her sister and brothers.
And Wolfen, good-hearted German that he was, grasped it warmly, and said he was sorry too; and then we all trooped up to the house and sat down, only to rise up again with our glasses clinking together as we drank to our wives and ourselves and the coming Christmas, and to the brown smiling faces of the people around us, who wondered why we grew merry so suddenly; for sometimes, as they knew, we had all quarrelled with one another, and bitter words had passed; for so it ever is, and ever shall be, even in the far South Seas, when questions of 'trade' and 'money' come between good fellowship and old-time camaraderie.
And then sweet, dark-eyed Sera, MacBride's young wife, took up her guitar and sang us love songs in the old Lusitanian tongue of her father; and Tom Devine, the ex-boat-steerer, and Charley de Buis, the reckless; and Peter Huysmans, the red-faced, white-haired old Dutchman, all joined hands and danced around the rough table; while Billy Grey and Ludwig Wolfen stood on the top of it and sang, or tried to sing, 'Home Sweet Home'; and the writer of this memory of those old Pacific days sat in a chair in the doorway and wondered where we should all be the next year.
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