and to help the unfortunate boy. When he had been made comfortable
by the surgeon, he was overwhelmed with presents.

My vis-à-vis at table, Herr Gluck, a piano manufacturer of Munich, was
a follower of Horace Fletcher, the American munching missionary. Unlike
the Swiss, who craved raw food, Herr Gluck ate everything, but
each mouthful only after thorough maceration, salivation, and slow
deglutition. At breakfast he absorbed a glass of milk and a piece of
toast, but took longer than I did to bolt melon, bacon and eggs, toast,
coffee, and marmalade. He sold the pianos his family had made for a
hundred years, and munched all about the world. He professed rugged
health, and never tired of dancing; but he looked drawn and melancholy,
and had naught of the rugged masculinity of the bolters. Once or
twice he drank in my company a cocktail, and he munched each sip as
if it were mutton. He would occupy the entire dinner-time with one
baked potato. I was endeared to him because I had known his master,
Fletcher, and with him, too, had chewed a glass of wine in the patio
of the Army and Navy Club in Manila. I longed to pit the Swiss and
Herr Gluck in argument, but in sober thought had to give the laurel to
the latter, because, in case of stress, one might, with his system,
live on a trifle, while raw, nourishing food might be difficult to
get in quantity.

Most of the passengers were Australians and New-Zealanders returning
home, and only a few were bound for Tahiti--the Tahitian women,
the Swiss, Hallman and his son, and M. Leboucher, a young merchant,
born there, of a Spanish mother. William McBirney of County Antrim,
but long in Raratonga, an island two days' steaming from Tahiti,
was going back to his adopted home.