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Updated: June 8, 2025
I hid my surfeit. These new-comers had adorned themselves for the taupiti, the public fête, as they considered it, and as they came along the road had plucked ferns and flowers for wreaths. Without such sweet treasures upon them they have no festal spirit. There were a dozen of these Moorea girls and visitors from Tahiti, one or two from the Tiare Hotel, whose homes were perhaps on this island.
This casual conversation was the prelude to the strangest coincidence of my life. When I awoke the next morning, I found that the big sea had not come and that the sun was shining. My head full of the romance of wrecks and piracy, I climbed the hill behind the Tiare Hotel to the signal station.
The usual traveler spent most of his time in and about the hotel, and from it made his trips to the country districts or to other islands. Except for two small restaurants kept by Europeans, the Tiare was the only eating-place in the capital of Tahiti unless one counted a score of dismal coffee-shops kept by Chinese, and frequented by natives, sailors, and beach-combers.
Moses means "Pulled out of the Water," or "Water Baby." Some of our names of people and places have ridiculous import in Tahiti. I remember Lovaina laughed immoderately, and called all the maids to view a line in the Tiare Hotel register in which a man had put himself down from "Omaha." After we had eaten, we sat smoking in the darkness, I feeling very close to the blue field of stars.
It was quite greasy, but intact. The first breakfast at the Tiare began at 6:30, but lingered for several hours. It was of fruit and coffee and bread; papayas, bananas, oranges, pineapples, and alligator-pears, which latter the French call avocats, the Mexicans ahuacatl, and were brought here from the West Indies. To this breakfast male guests dropped in from the bath in pajamas, but the déjeuner
"I am very fond of chess, and he was always glad of a game. I come to Tahiti three or four times a year for my business, and when he was at Papeete he would come here and we would play. When he married" Captain Brunot smiled and shrugged his shoulders "<i enfin>, when he went to live with the girl that Tiare gave him, he asked me to go and see him. I was one of the guests at the wedding feast."
When he brought me and my belongings from the Tiare, Lovaina came with us. She signed to him to go to the glacerie, the ice- and soda-water factory, to buy ice for the hotel. The Dummy was intensely jealous of new-comers whom Lovaina liked.
But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight? Tiare, when I told her this story, praised my prudence, and for a few minutes we worked in silence, for we were shelling peas. Then her eyes, always alert for the affairs of her kitchen, fell on some action of the Chinese cook which aroused her violent disapproval. She turned on him with a torrent of abuse.
I think may be you love one country vahine!" She rubbed my back, and said that Lying Bill, who had been at the Tiare for luncheon, hoped to sail in two days. McHenry was to go with us as a passenger on the schooner. Everybody knew everybody's business. Lovaina suddenly bethought herself of a richer morsel of gossip. She struck her forehead. "My God! how long you been?
Hundreds of women were long in their places, some white, many part white, and others Tahitians. They were in their best gowns, flirting, eating fruit and nuts, laughing, and talking. Every girl of the Tiare Hotel was there, and all the guests. I was wedged in between Lovaina and Atupu, and the latter stroked my leg often, as one does a cat or dog, affectionately, but without much thought about it.
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