ez the captain. 'Born in my own
state, and painted up like Sitting Bull on the warpath? Get off this
ship,' sez 'e, wild, 'get off this ship, or I'll put you in irons
and take you back to the blooming jail you escaped from!'

"'Oward leaped over the side and swum ashore."

An avenue ran the length of the beach, shaded by trees, and crossing
a gentle stream. Along this avenue was all the life and commerce of
Tai-o-hae. Two traders' shops, empty offices, a gendarme, a handful
of motley half-castes lounging under the trees--this was all that
was left of former greatness. Only nature had not changed. It flung
over the broken remnants of the glory and the dream its lovely cloak
of verdure and of flower. Man had almost ceased to be a figure in the
scene he had dominated for untold centuries.

Crossing the stepping-stones of the brook we met a darkish, stout
man in overalls.

"Good morn'," he said pleasantly. I looked at him and guessed his
name at once.

"Good-morning," I answered. "You are the son of T'yonny."

"My father, Mist' Howard, dead," he said. "You _Menike_ like him?"

Before I could answer something entered my ear and something my nose.
These somethings buzzed and bit fearsomely. I coughed and sputtered.
An old woman on the bank was sitting in the smudge of a fire of
cocoanut husks. She was scratching her arms and legs, covered with
angry red blotches.

"The _nonos_ never stop biting," she said in French. These _nonos_
are the dread sand-flies that Pere Victorien had run from to get
some sleep in Atuona. They are a kind of gadfly, red-hot needles on
wings.

We sauntered along the road, tormented by the buzzing pests at which
we constantly slapped and, crossing a tiny bridge over the brook,
approached the Mission of Tai-o-hae, that once pompous and powerful
center of the diffusion of the faith throughout the Marquesas. The
road was lined with guavas, mangos, cocoanuts, and tamarinds, all
planted with precision and care. The ambitious fathers who had begun
these plantings scores of years before had provided the choicest
fruits for their table. All over the world the members of the great
religious orders of Europe have carried the seeds of the best
varieties of fruits and flowers, of trees and shrubs and vegetables;
more than organized science they deserve the credit for introducing
non-native species into all climes.

About the mission grounds was a stone wall, stout and fairly high,
which had assured p