called him cochon sauvage--cocon chauvage, as Hoka mispronounced
it. With people so nice and so touchy, it was scarce to be
supposed that our company of greenhorns should not blunder into
offences. Hoka, on one of his visits, fell suddenly in a brooding
silence, and presently after left the ship with cold formality.
When he took me back into favour, he adroitly and pointedly
explained the nature of my offence: I had asked him to sell cocoa-
nuts; and in Hoka's view articles of food were things that a
gentleman should give, not sell; or at least that he should not
sell to any friend. On another occasion I gave my boat's crew a
luncheon of chocolate and biscuits. I had sinned, I could never
learn how, against some point of observance; and though I was drily
thanked, my offerings were left upon the beach. But our worst
mistake was a slight we put on Toma, Hoka's adoptive father, and in
his own eyes the rightful chief of Anaho. In the first place, we
did not call upon him, as perhaps we should, in his fine new
European house, the only one in the hamlet. In the second, when we
came ashore upon a visit to his rival, Taipi-Kikino, it was Toma
whom we saw standing at the head of the beach, a magnificent figure
of a man, magnificently tattooed; and it was of Toma that we asked
our question: 'Where is the chief?' 'What chief?' cried Toma, and
turned his back on the blasphemers. Nor did he forgive us. Hoka
came and went with us daily; but, alone I believe of all the
countryside, neither Toma nor his wife set foot on board the Casco.
The temptation resisted it is hard for a European to compute. The
flying city of Laputa moored for a fortnight in St. James's Park
affords but a pale figure of the Casco anchored before Anaho; for
the Londoner has still his change of pleasures, but the Marquesan
passes to his grave through an unbroken uniformity of days.