e case from the thieves of Cantonese. Then the cards
were dealt by Kivi, who had won the cut.

O Lalala and he eyed each other like Japanese wrestlers before the
grapple. Their eyes were slits as they put up the ante of five
packets each. O Lalala opened the pot for five packets and Kivi,
nudged by his backers, feverishly balanced them. He took three cards,
O Lalala but one. Standing behind the Tahitian, I saw that he had no
cards of value, but coolly he threw thirty packets upon the mat. The
others shuddered, for Kivi had drawn deuces to a pair of kings. They
made the pipe glow again. They puffed it; they spat; they put their
heads together, and he threw down his cards.

Then calmly the Tahitian laid down his own, and they saw that they
could have beaten him. They shouted in dismay, and withdrew Kivi,
who after some palaver went away with them into the darkness.

One or two candlenut torches dimly illumined the figures of the
squatting women who remained. Upon the sugar-cane mat O Lalala
stretched himself at ease, closing his eyes. A silence broken only
by the stealthy noises of the forest closed upon us. Teata, her dark
eyes wide, looked fearfully over her shoulder and crept close to me.
In a low voice she said that the absent players had thrown earth
over their shoulders, stamped, and called upon Po, the Marquesan
deity of darkness, yet it had not availed them. Now they went to make
magic to those at whose very mention she shuddered, not naming them.

We waited, while the torches sputtered lower, and a dank breath of
the forest crept between the trees. O Lalala appeared to sleep,
though when Apporo attempted to withdraw a card he pinned it with
his crutch.

It was half an hour before the players returned. Kivi crouched to
his place without a word, and the others arranged themselves behind
him in fixed array, as though they had a cabalistic number-formation
in mind.

Fresh torches were made, and many disputed the privilege of holding
them, as they controlled one's view of the mat. O Lalala sat
imperturbable, waiting. At last all was ready. The light fell upon
the giant limbs and huge torsos of the men, picking out arabesques of
tattooing and catching ruddy gleams from red _pareus_. The women, in
crimson gowns caught up to the waist, their luxuriant hair adorned
with flowers and phosphorescent fungus, their necks hung with the
pink peppers of Chile, squatted in a close ring about the players.

The lame man too