First night in Atuona valley; sensational arrival of the Golden Bed;
Titi-huti's tattooed legs.


It was necessary to find at once a residence for my contemplated
stay in Atuona, for the schooner sailed on the morrow, and my brief
glimpse of the Marquesans had whetted my desire to live among them.
I would not accept the courteous invitation of the governor to stay
at the palace, for officialdom never knows its surroundings, and
grandeur makes for no confidence from the lowly.

Lam Kai Oo, an aged Chinaman whom I encountered at the trader's
store, came eagerly to my rescue with an offered lease of his
deserted store and bakeshop. From Canton he had been brought in
his youth by the labor bosses of western America to help build the
transcontinental railway, and later another agency had set him down
in Taha-Uka to grow cotton for John Hart. He saw the destruction of
that plantation, escaped the plague of opium, and with his scant
savings made himself a petty merchant in Atuona. Now he was old and
had retired up the valley to the home he had long established there
beside his copra furnace and his shrine of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

He led me to the abandoned shack, a long room, tumbledown, moist,
festooned with cobwebs, the counters and benches black with
reminiscences of twenty thousand tradings and Chinese meals. The
windows were but half a dozen bars, and the heavy vapors of a cruel
past hung about the sombre walls. Though opium had long been
contraband, its acrid odor permeated the worn furnishings. Here with
some misgivings I prepared to spend my second night in Hiva-oa.