becoming in a traveller. And, seen more privately, the man
improved. Something negroid in character and face was still
displeasing; but his ugly mouth became attractive when he smiled,
his figure and bearing were certainly noble, and his eyes superb.
In his appreciation of jams and pickles, in is delight in the
reverberating mirrors of the dining cabin, and consequent endless
repetition of Moipus and Mata-Galahis, he showed himself engagingly
a child. And yet I am not sure; and what seemed childishness may
have been rather courtly art. His manners struck me as beyond the
mark; they were refined and caressing to the point of grossness,
and when I think of the serene absent-mindedness with which he
first strolled in upon our party, and then recall him running on
hands and knees along the cabin sofas, pawing the velvet, dipping
into the beds, and bleating commendatory 'mitais' with exaggerated
emphasis, like some enormous over-mannered ape, I feel the more
sure that both must have been calculated. And I sometimes wonder
next, if Moipu were quite alone in this polite duplicity, and ask
myself whether the Casco were quite so much admired in the
Marquesas as our visitors desired us to suppose.

I will complete this sketch of an incurable cannibal grandee with
two incongruous traits. His favourite morsel was the human hand,
of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness. And
when he said good-bye to Mrs. Stevenson, holding her hand, viewing
her with tearful eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation in
the falsetto of Marquesan high society, he wrote upon her mind a
sentimental impression which I try in vain to share.