The moon was gone, but the stars needed no help, for they shone as if
the trump of doom were due at dawn, and they should be no more. Blue
and gold, a cathedral ceiling with sanctuary lamps hung high, the
dome of earth sparkled and glittered, and on the schooners by the
Cercle Bougainville himenes of joy rang out on the soft air.

I passed them close, so close that a girl of Huahine who was dancing
on the deck of the Mihimana seized me by the arm and embraced me.

"Come back, stranger!" she cried in Tahitian. "There is pleasure here,
and the night is but just begun."

A dozen island schooners swayed in the gentle breeze, their stays
humming softly, their broadsides separated from the quays by just
a dozen or twenty feet, as if they feared to risk the seduction of
the land, and felt themselves safer parted from the shore. On all the
street-level verandas, the entrances to the shops and the restaurants,
the hundreds of natives who had not wanted other lodging slept as
children in cradles until they should rise for coffee before the
market-bell.

From the Chinese shop at the corner the strains of a Canton actor's
falsetto, with the squeak of the Celestial fiddles issued from a
phonograph, but so real I fancied I was again on Shameen, listening
over the Canton River to the noises of the night, the music, and the
singsong girls of the silver combs.

I went on, and met the peanut-man. He sold me two small bags of roasted
goobers for eight sous. He wore the brown, oilskin-like, two-piece