suggested Havens.

"Yes," said Loudon; "it seems odd, but I rather do."

While they were yet on board, the sun had dipped; the sunset gun (a
rifle) had cracked from the war-schooner, and the colours had been
handed down. Dusk was deepening as they came ashore; and the _Cercle
International_(as the club is officially and significantly named) began
to shine, from under its low verandahs, with the light of many lamps.
The good hours of the twenty-four drew on; the hateful, poisonous
day-fly of Nukahiva was beginning to desist from its activity; the
land-breeze came in refreshing draughts; and the club-men gathered
together for the hour of absinthe. To the commandant himself, to the man
whom he was then contending with at billiards--a trader from the next
island, honorary member of the club, and once carpenter's mate on board
a Yankee war-ship--to the doctor of the port, to the Brigadier of
Gendarmerie, to the opium-farmer, and to all the white men whom the tide
of commerce, or the chances of shipwreck and desertion, had stranded on
the beach of Tai-o-hae, Mr. Loudon Dodd was formally presented; by all
(since he was a man of pleasing exterior, smooth ways, and an
unexceptionable flow of talk, whether in French or English) he was
excellently well received; and presently, with one of the last eight
bottles of beer on a table at his elbow, found himself the rather silent
centrepiece of a voluble group on the verandah.

Talk in the South Seas is all upon one pattern; it is a wide ocean,
indeed, but a narrow world: you shall never talk long and not hear the
name of Bully Hayes, a naval hero whose exploits and deserved extinction
left Europe cold; commerce will be touched on, copra, shell, perhaps
cotton or fungus; but in a far-away, dilettante fashion, as by men not
deeply interested; through all, the names of schooners and their
captains will keep coming and going, thick as may-flies; and news of the
last shipwreck will be placidly exchanged and debated. To a stranger,
this conversation will at first seem scarcely brilliant but he will soon
catch the tone; and by the time he shall have moved a year or so in the
island world, and come across a good number of the schooners, so that
every captain's name calls up a figure in pyjamas or white duck, and
becomes used to a certain laxity of moral tone which prevails (as in
memory of Mr. Hayes) on smuggling, ship-scuttling, barratry, piracy, the
labour trade, and other kindred fields