beach.

There in his board shanty, six by ten feet, we ate our first dinner
in the islands, while the wind surged through swishing palm-leaves
outside, and nuts fell now and then upon the iron roof with the
resounding crash of bombs. It was a plain, but plentiful, meal of
canned foods, served by the tawny gendarme and the wicked Song,
whose term of punishment for distributing brandy seemed curiously
suited to his crime.

At midnight I accompanied a happy governor to his palace, which had
one spare bedroom, sketchily furnished. During the night the slats
of my bed gave way with a dreadful din, and I woke to find the
governor in pajamas of rose-colored silk, with pistol in hand,
shedding electric rays upon me from a battery lamp. There was
anxiety in his manner as he said:

"You never can tell. A chief's son tried to kill my predecessor. I
do not know these Marquesans. We are few whites here. And, _mon dieu!_
the guardian of the palace is himself a native!"

[Illustration: Antoinette, a Marquesan dancing girl]

[Illustration: Marquesans in Sunday clothes
The daughter of Titihuti, chieftess of Hiva-Oa. On the left her husband,
Pierre Pradorat, on the right, his brother]

CHAPTER V

First night in Atuona valley; sensational arrival of the Golden Bed;
Titi-huti's tattooed legs.

It was necessary to find at once a residence for my contemplated
stay in Atuona, for the schooner sailed on the morrow, and my brief
glimpse of the Marquesans had whetted my desire to live among them.
I would not accept the courteous invitation of the governor to stay
at the palace, for officialdom never knows its surroundings, and
grandeur makes for no confidence from the lowly.

Lam Kai Oo, an aged Chinaman whom I encountered at the trader's
store, came eagerly to my rescue with an offered lease of his
deserted store and bakeshop. From Canton he had been brought in
his youth by the labor bosses of western America to help build the
transcontinental railway, and later another agency had set him down
in Taha-Uka to grow cotton for John Hart. He saw the destruction of
that plantation, escaped the plague of opium, and with his scant
savings made himself a petty merchant in Atuona. Now he was old and
had retired up the valley to the home he had long established there
beside his copra furnace and his shrine of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

He led me to the abandoned shack, a long room, tumbledown, moist,
festooned with cobwebs, the count