his kingdom in the Marquesas Islands, eight hundred miles from here,
northward, Temoana had been a singer of psalms at the Protestant
mission in his valley of Tai-o-hae, in the island of Nukahiva, a
victim of shanghaiers, a cook on a whaler, a tattooed man in English
penny shows, a repatriate, a protege of the Catholic archbishop of the
Marquesans, and finally, through the influence of the Roman church,
a king. He worked damned hard for the French flag and the church,
and the generous colonial bureau of France paid his widow a pension
of ten dollars a month until she died of melancholy among the nuns. I
knew her and I knew men who knew him. He was given a gorgeous uniform
of gold lace by his promoters, which I think killed him, though when
he sweated, he would strip to his handsomely marked skin and sit
naked in the breeze. The queen never wore more than a diaper or a gown.

"With the Marquesas Islands taken, the French warships came to
Tahiti. French Catholic priests had been deported from here because the
Protestants were already in possession, and objected to competition,
saying that the priests were children of Beelzebub, and taught false
doctrines and morals. The Queen of Tahiti, whose dynasty the Protestant
missionaries had created, advised the pope's men to seek a heathen
people not already worshiping the true God. The zealous priests
who had come with explicit commands to found a mission in Tahiti,
launched the curse of Rome upon the king, the Protestant ministers,
and especially upon Mr. Pritchard, the British consul and the queen's
physician and spiritual adviser.

"Pritchard had the interests of England and the Lord at heart, and
his whispers in the queen's ear sent the earnest priests aboard a ship
bound for a distant port. They complained, and the French admiral then
arrived and pointed his guns at the palace and the Protestant mission,