efit, but nevertheless agreed with
me that we--Donald, she and myself--ought to show the Americans and the
'Dutchmen' how an English Christmas should be celebrated. But as Sera
was a half-caste native of the Pelews, and had never been to a civilised
country, she also concurred with me that Donald and myself should run
the show, which, although I was not a married man, was to take place in
my house on account of the greater space available. Donald, she said,
wanted to have a 'hakkise'; so we bought a nanny-goat from Ludwig
Wolfen, the German trader at Molok, and one evening--the 23rd of
December--I helped Sera to drive and drag the unsuspecting creature home
to her husband's place to the slaughter. (I may as well say at once that
MacBride's nanny-goat haggis was a hideous failure, and my boat's
crew, to whom it was handed over, with many strong expressions about
MacBride's beastly provincial taste, said that it _smelt_ good, like
shark's liver, but was not at all so juicy.)

Meanwhile, Wolfen, a fat, good-hearted Teuton, with a face like a full
moon in a fog, called upon me, and remarked in a squashy tone of voice,
superinduced by too many years of lager beer, and its resultant adipose
tissue, that he and Peter Huysmans, his neighbour, would feel very much
hurt if we did not invite them to participate in the festivities. I said
that 'Blazy-head' (for so we called dear old MacBride) and myself would
be delighted; whereupon Wolfen, who had once, when he was a sailor on
an English ship, spent a Christmas in a public-house somewhere in the
vicinity of the East India Docks, said that the correct thing for us
to do would be to have a Christmas cake; also, he suggested we should
invite Tom Devine and Charley de Buis, the two American traders who
lived across the lagoon, to join the party. Being aware of the fact
that, from trade jealousies, there had hitherto been a somewhat
notorious bitterness of feeling between my German fellow-trader and the
two Americans, I shook his hand warmly, said that I was delighted to see
that he could forgive and forget, and that I should that moment send
my boat across the lagoon to Devine and Charley de Buis with a written
invitation, and ask them to favour us with their company; also, that
as Mrs Charley--who was a Samoan half-caste girl--was skilled in baking
bread, perhaps she would lend Mesdames MacBride, Wolfen and Huysmans her
assistance in making a Christmas cake, the size of which should c