her anchor and send her boat ashore with a stern line. Fastened to
a cannon and passed around a bitt on the schooner, the crew hauled
her close to the embankment, and soon she was broadside to, and her
gangway on the quay. Her captain, M. Moet, Woronick, a pearl merchant,
a government physician, and the passengers from the Paumotus were soon
ashore shaking hands with friends. I walked behind them to Lovaina's
for coffee, and was introduced to them all.

Woronick took me to his house across the street from the Tiare
Hotel, and there opened a massive safe and showed me drawer after
drawer of pearls. They were of all sizes and shapes and tints, from
a pear-shaped, brilliant, Orient pearl of great value, to the golden
pipi of inconsiderable worth. Woronick spoke of a pearl he had bought
some years ago in Takaroa, the creation of which, he said, had cost
the lives of three men including a great savant.

"If you go to Takaroa," said Woronick, "be sure to see old Tepeva
a Tepeva. He used to be one of the best divers in the Low Islands,
but he's got the bends. He sold me the greatest pearl ever found in
these fisheries in the last twenty years, and I made enough profit
on it to buy a house in Paris and live a year. Get him to tell you
his yarn. It beats Monte Cristo all hollow."

Which I made a note to do.

In the afternoon, with Charlie Eager, a guest at the Annexe, I went
to the worship-place of the Chinese, on the Broom Road. Outwardly,
it had not the flaunting distinction of the joss-houses of the Far
East or those of New York or San Francisco. The Chinese usually builds
his temples even in foreign lands in the same Oriental superfluity