novel, and to cover the rebuff McHenry turned to talk of trade with
Gedge, who spoke little.

The traderoom of the _Morning Star_, opening from the cabin, was to
me the door to romance. When I was a boy there was more flavor in
traderooms than in war. To have seen one would have been as a
glimpse of the Holy Grail to a sworn knight. Those traderooms of my
youthful imagination smelt of rum and gun-powder, and beside them
were racks of rifles to repel the dusky figures coming over the
bulwarks.

The traderoom of the _Morning Star_ was odorous, too. It had no
window, and when one opened the door all was obscure at first, while
smells of rank Tahiti tobacco, cheap cotton prints, a broken bottle
of perfume and scented soaps struggled for supremacy. Gradually the
eye discovered shelves and bins and goods heaped from floor to
ceiling; pins and anchors, harpoons and pens, crackers and jewelry,
cloth, shoes, medicine and tomahawks, socks and writing paper.

Trade business, McHenry's monologue explained, is not what it was.
When these petty merchants dared not trust themselves ashore their
guns guarded against too eager customers. But now almost every
inhabited island has its little store, and the trader has to pursue
his buyers, who die so fast that he must move from island to island
in search of population.

"Booze is boss," said McHenry. "I have two thousand pounds in bank
in Australia, all made by selling liquor to the natives. It's
against French law to sell or trade or give 'em a drop, but we all
do it. If you don't have it, you can't get cargo. In the diving