the Marquesas; with blood at fever heat
and hearts beating like wild things against bars, they listen when
love or its counterfeit pours into their ears those soft words with
nothing in them that make a song. They have no barriers of reserve
or haughtiness; they make no bargains; they go where the heart goes,
careless of certified vows.

"_Mon dieu!_" Mademoiselle N---- exclaimed and put her tiny hand to
her red lips. "What if the good sisters heard me? I am bad. I know.
_Eh bien!_ I am Marquesan after all."

We were about to cross the stream by my cabin, and I mounted the
horse behind her to save a wetting. She turned impulsively and
looked at me, her lovely face close to mine, her dark eyes burning,
and her hot breath on my cheek.

"Write to me when you are in Tahiti, and tell me if you think I
would be happy there?" she said imploringly. "I have no friends here,
except the nuns. I need so much to go away. I am dying here."

Coming up my trail a few days later, I found on my _paepae_ a
shabbily dressed little bag-of-bones of a white man, with a dirty
gray beard and a harsh voice like that of Baufre. He had a note to
me from Le Brunnec, introducing M. Lemoal, born in Brest, a
naturalized American. The note was sealed, and I put it carefully
away before turning to my visitor. It read:

"CHER CITOYEN:

"I send you a specimen of the Marquesan beaches, so that you can
have a little fun. This fellow have a very tremendous life. He is an
old sailor, pirate, gold-miner, Chinese-hanger, thief, robber,
honest-man, baker, trader; in a word, an interesting type. With the
aid of several glasses of wine I have put him in the mood to talk
delightfully."

A low-browed man was Lemoal, sapped and ruthless, but certainly he
had adventured.

Was the Bella Union Theater still there in Frisco? Did they still
fight in Bottle Meyers, and was his friend Tasset on the police
force yet? His memories of San Francisco ante-dated mine. He had
been a hoodlum there, and had helped to hang Chinese. He had gone to
Tahiti in 1870 and made a hundred thousand francs keeping a bakery.
That fortune had lasted him during two years' tour of the world.

"Now I'm bust," he said bitterly. "Now I got no woman, no children,
no friends, and I don't want none. I am by myself and damn everybody!"

I soothed his misanthropy with two fingers of rum, and he mellowed
into advice.

"I saw you with that daughter of Liha-Liha," he said, using