his ground on the first question, and they were sure
to weaken on the second. A little struggle they still made for the
fashion's sake; and then one exceedingly tipsy deputation departed,
greatly rejoicing, a case of brandy wheeling beside them in a barrow.
The Rarotongan (whom I had never seen before) wrung me by the hand like
a man bound on a far voyage. "My dear frien'!" he cried, "good-bye, my
dear frien'!"--tears of kuemmel standing in his eyes; the king lurched as
he went, the courtier ambled--a strange party of intoxicated children to
be entrusted with that barrowful of madness.

You could never say the town was quiet; all morning there was a ferment
in the air, an aimless movement and congregation of natives in the
street. But it was not before half-past one that a sudden hubbub of
voices called us from the house, to find the whole white colony already
gathered on the spot as by concerted signal. The "Sans Souci" was
overrun with rabble, the stair and verandah thronged. From all these
throats an inarticulate babbling cry went up incessantly; it sounded
like the bleating of young lambs, but angrier. In the road his royal
highness (whom I had seen so lately in the part of butler) stood crying
upon Tom; on the top step, tossed in the hurly-burly, Tom was shouting
to the prince. Yet a while the pack swayed about the bar, vociferous.
Then came a brutal impulse; the mob reeled, and returned and was
rejected; the stair showed a stream of heads; and there shot into view,
through the disbanding ranks, three men violently dragging in their
midst a fourth. By his hair and his hands, his head forced as low as his
knees, his face concealed, he was wrenched from the verandah and whisked
along the road into the village, howling as he disappeared. Had his face
been raised, we should have seen it bloodied, and the blood was not his
own. The courtier with the turban of frizzed hair had paid the costs of
this disturbance with the lower part of one ear.

So the brawl passed with no other casualty than might seem comic to the
inhumane. Yet we looked round on serious faces, and--a fact that spoke
volumes--Tom was putting up the shutters on the bar. Custom might go
elsewhither, Mr. Williams might profit as he pleased, but Tom had had
enough of bar-keeping for that day. Indeed, the event had hung on a
hair. A man had sought to draw a revolver--on what quarrel I could never
learn, and perhaps he himself could not have told; one shot, wh