that throngs the wharf as the steamer draws alongside is gay
and debonair; it is a noisy, cheerful, gesticulating crowd.
It is a sea of brown faces. You have an impression of
coloured movement against the flaming blue of the sky.
Everything is done with a great deal of bustle, the unloading
of the baggage, the examination of the customs; and everyone
seems to smile at you. It is very hot. The colour dazzles you.

Chapter XLVI

HAD not been in Tahiti long before I met Captain Nichols.
He came in one morning when I was having breakfast on the terrace
of the hotel and introduced himself. He had heard that I was
interested in Charles Strickland, and announced that he was
come to have a talk about him. They are as fond of gossip in
Tahiti as in an English village, and one or two enquiries I
had made for pictures by Strickland had been quickly spread.
I asked the stranger if he had breakfasted.

"Yes; I have my coffee early," he answered, "but I don't mind
having a drop of whisky."

I called the Chinese boy.

"You don't think it's too early?" said the Captain.

"You and your liver must decide that between you," I replied.

"I'm practically a teetotaller," he said, as he poured himself
out a good half-tumbler of Canadian Club.

When he smiled he showed broken and discoloured teeth. He was
a very lean man, of no more than average height, with gray
hair cut short and a stubbly gray moustache. He had not
shaved for a couple of days. His face was deeply lined,
burned brown by long exposure to the sun, and he had a pair of
small blue eyes which were astonishingly shifty. They moved
quickly, following my smallest gesture, and they gave him the
look of a very thorough rogue. But at the moment he was all
heartiness and good-fellowship. He was dressed in a
bedraggled suit of khaki, and his hands would have been all
the better for a wash.

"I knew Strickland well," he said, as he leaned back in his
chair and lit the cigar I had offered him. "It's through me
he came out to the islands."

"Where did you meet him?" I asked.

"In Marseilles."

"What were you doing there?"

He gave me an ingratiating smile.

"Well, I guess I was on the beach."

My friend's appearance suggested that he was now in the
same predicament, and I prepared myself to cultivate an
agreeable acquaintance. The society of beach-combers always
repays the small pains you need be at to enjoy it. They are
easy of approach and aff