head, stamped, scowled, and glared, till he looked like the
very Angel of Vengeance.

"Deluded man!" sighed the doctor, on one of these occasions, "I fear
he takes the fanatical view of the subject." One thing was certain:
when Po-Po spoke, all listened; a great deal more than could be said
for the rest; for under the discipline of two or three I could
mention, some of the audience napped; others fidgeted; a few yawned;
and one irritable old gentleman, in a nightcap of cocoa-nut leaves,
used to clutch his long staff in a state of excessive nervousness,
and stride out of the church, making all the noise he could, to
emphasize his disgust.

Right adjoining the chapel is an immense, rickety building, with
windows and shutters, and a half-decayed board flooring laid upon
trunks of palm-trees. They called it a school-house; but as such we
never saw it occupied. It was often used as a court-room, however;
and here we attended several trials; among others, that of a decayed
naval officer, and a young girl of fourteen; the latter charged with
having been very naughty on a particular occasion set forth in the
pleadings; and the former with having aided and abetted her in her
naughtiness, and with other misdemeanours.

The foreigner was a tall, military-looking fellow, with a dark cheek
and black whiskers. According to his own account, he had lost a
colonial armed brig on the coast of New Zealand; and since then, had
been leading the life of a man about town among the islands of the
Pacific.

The doctor wanted to know why he did not go home and report the loss
of his brig; but Captain Crash, as they called him, had some
incomprehensible reasons for not doing so, about which he could talk
by the hour, and no one be any the wiser. Probably he was a discreet
man, and thought it best to waive an interview with the lords of the
admiralty.

For some time past, this extremely suspicious character had been
carrying on the illicit trade in French wines and brandies, smuggled
over from the men-of-war lately touching at Tahiti. In a grove near
the anchorage he had a rustic shanty and arbour, where, in quiet
times, when no ships were in Taloo, a stray native once in a while
got boozy, and staggered home, catching at the cocoa-nut trees as he
went. The captain himself lounged under a tree during the warm
afternoons, pipe in mouth; thinking, perhaps, over old times, and
occasionally feeling his shoulders for his lost epaulets.

But,