the table freight and drank the warm champagne.

A seamy-visaged Frenchman, Pierre Guillitoue, the village butcher--a
philosopher and anarchist, he told me--rapped with a bottle on the
veranda railing. The governor, in every inch of gold lace possible,
made a gallant figure as he rose and faced the people. His whiskers
were aglow with dressing. The ceremony began with an address by a
native, Haabunai.

Intrepreted by Guillitoue, Haabunai said that the Marquesans were
glad to have a new governor, a wise man who would cure their ills, a
just ruler, and a friend; then speaking directly to his own people,
he praised extravagantly the newcomer, so that Guillitoue choked in
his translation, and ceased, and mixed himself a glass of absinthe
and water.

The governor replied briefly in French. He said that he had come in
their interest; that he would not cheat them or betray them; that he
would make them well if they were sick. The French flag was their
flag; the French people loved them. The Marquesans listened without
interest, as if he spoke of some one in Tibet who wanted to sell a
green elephant.

In the South Seas a meeting out-of-doors means a dance. The
Polynesians have ever made this universal human expression of the
rhythmic principle of motion the chief evidence of emotion, and
particularly of elation. Civilization has all but stifled it in many
islands. Christianity has made it a sin. It dies hard, for it is the
basic outlet of strong natural feeling, and the great group
entertainment of these peoples.