A frank statement. We vote on the question of matrimony. A triple
wedding. An epithalmic verse. We remember the "Kawa." An interview
with William Henry Thomas. Triplett's strategy. Safe within the atoll.


In most volumes on the South Seas the chapter which I am about to write
would be omitted. I mean to say that we have reached a point in my
narrative in which the status of our relations with the Filbertine
women, as such, must either be discussed frankly and openly, or treated
in the usual tongue-in-cheek fashion which seems to be the proper thing
with English and American writers.

I have looked them all over carefully (the writers, I mean), and find
them divided into two categories, those who take their wives along as
a guarantee of virtue, or those who are by nature Galahads, Parsifals
and St. Anthonys. This latter group is to me particularly trying. They
revel in descriptions of desirous damsels with burning eyes who crave
companionship, but when an artfully devised encounter throws one of
these passionate persons across the path of the man behind the pen,
does he falter or swerve or make a misstep? Never. Right there is where
the blood of the Galahads tells. Supremely he rises above temptation!
Gracefully he sidesteps! Innocently he falls asleep!

I don't believe a word of it. I think it's just a case of literary men
sticking together.

Two days after the Grand Banquet described in the last chapter, Whinney,
Swank and I awoke with a sigh of simultaneous satisfaction, completely
rested and restored. Ten minutes later we were engaged in a brisk