?" I have
heard a trader ask. "I got two, three outches,"[10] his majesty replied:
"I think three." Hence the commercial importance of Apemama, the trade
of three islands being centred there in a single hand; hence it is that
so many whites have tried in vain to gain or to preserve a footing;
hence ships are adorned, cooks have special orders, and captains array
themselves in smiles, to greet the king. If he be pleased with his
welcome and the fare he may pass days on board, and every day, and
sometimes every hour, will be of profit to the ship. He oscillates
between the cabin, where he is entertained with strange meats, and the
trade-room, where he enjoys the pleasures of shopping on a scale to
match his person. A few obsequious attendants squat by the house door,
awaiting his least signal. In the boat, which has been suffered to drop
astern, one or two of his wives lie covered from the sun under mats,
tossed by the short sea of the lagoon, and enduring agonies of heat and
tedium. This severity is now and then relaxed and the wives allowed on
board. Three or four were thus favoured on the day of our arrival:
substantial ladies airily attired in _ridis_. Each had a share of copra,
her _peculium_, to dispose of for herself. The display in the
trade-room--hats, ribbons, dresses, scents, tins of salmon--the pride of
the eye and the lust of the flesh--tempted them in vain. They had but
the one idea--tobacco, the island currency, tantamount to minted gold;
returned to shore with it, burthened but rejoicing; and late into the
night, on the royal terrace, were to be seen counting the sticks by
lamplight in the open air.

The king is no such economist. He is greedy of things new and foreign.
House after house, chest after chest, in the palace precinct, is
already crammed with clocks, musical boxes, blue spectacles, umbrellas,
knitted waistcoats, bolts of stuff, tools, rifles, fowling-pieces,
medicines, European foods, sewing-machines, and, what is more
extraordinary, stoves: all that ever caught his eye, tickled his
appetite, pleased him for its use, or puzzled him with its apparent
inutility. And still his lust is unabated. He is possessed by the seven
devils of the collector. He hears a thing spoken of, and a shadow comes
on his face. "I think I no got him," he will say; and the treasures he
has seem worthless in comparison. If a ship be bound for Apemama, the
merchant racks his brain to hit upon some novelty. This he leaves