The crews of the schooner and of the other Moorea boat besides our
own had a swarm of friends awaiting the casting off. Even a journey
of a few hours meant a farewell ceremony of many minutes. They
embrace one another and are often moved to tears at a separation of
a few days. When one of them goes aboard a steamship for America or
Australasia, the family and friends enact harrowing scenes at the
quay. They are sincerely moved at the thought of their loved ones
putting a long distance between them, and I saw a score of young
and old sobbing bitterly when the Noa-Noa left for San Francisco
though they stormed the stokers lustily when aroused. Their life is
so simple in these beloved islands that the dangers of the mainland
are exaggerated in their minds, and to the old the civilization of a
big city appears as a specter of horrible mien. The electric cars,
the crowds, the murders they read of and are told of, the bandits
in the picture-shows, the fearful stranglers of Paris, the lynchers,
the police, who in the films are always beating the poor, as in real
life, the pickpockets, and the hospitals where willy-nilly they render
one unconscious and remove one's vermiform appendix--all these are
nightmares to the aborigines whose relations are departing.

When heads were counted, Landers's was missing, and jumping into
Llewellyn's carriage, an old-fashioned phaëton, I drove to Lovaina's,
where he occupied the room next to mine in the detached house in
the animal-yard. He was sound asleep, having played poker and drunk
until an hour before; but when I awoke him I could not but admire the
serenity of the man. His body was in the posture in which he had lain
down, and his breathing was as a child's.

"Landers, get up!" I shouted from the doorway. He opened his eyes,
regarded me intently, and without a word went to the shower-bath by the