While they were yet on board, the sun had dipped; the sunset gun (a
rifle) cracked from the war-schooner, and the colours had been
handed down. Dusk was deepening as they came ashore; and the Cercle
Internationale (as the club is officially and significantly named) began
to shine, from under its low verandas, 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 centre-piece 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