Polynesia no less amusing and no less instructive than Pall Mall or Paris.

Mr. Loudon Dodd, though he was new to the group of the Marquesas, was already an old, salted trader; he knew the ships and the captains; he had assisted, in other islands, at the first steps of some career of which he now heard the culmination, or (vice versâ) he had brought with him from further south the end of some story which had begun in Tai-o-hae. Among other matters of interest, like other arrivals in the South Seas, he had a wreck to announce. The John T. Richards, it appeared, had met the fate of other island schooners.

“Dickinson piled her up on Palmerston Island,” Dodd announced.

“Who were the owners?” inquired one of the clubmen.

“O, the usual parties!” returned Loudon, “Capsicum and Co.”

A smile and a glance of intelligence went round the group; and perhaps Loudon gave voice to the general sentiment by remarking—

“Talk of good business! I know nothing better than a schooner, a competent captain, and a sound reliable reef.”

“Good business! There’s no such a thing!” said the Glasgow man. “Nobody makes anything but the missionaries—dash it!”

“I don’t know,” said another; “there’s a good deal in opium.”

“It’s a good job to strike a tabooed pearl-island—say, about the fourth year,” remarked a third, “skim the whole lagoon on the sly, and up stick and away before the French get wind of you.”

“A pig nokket of cold is good,” observed a German.

“There’s something in wrecks, too,” said Havens. “Look at that man in Honolulu, and the ship that went ashore on Waikiki Reef; it was blowing a kona, hard; and she began to break up as soon as she touched. Lloyd’s agent had her sold inside an hour; and before dark, when she went to pieces in earnest, the man that bought her had feathered his nest. Three more hours of daylight, and he might have retired from business. As it was, he built a house on Beretania Street, and called it after the ship.”

“Yes, there’s something in wrecks sometimes,” said the Glasgow voice; “but not often.”

“As a general rule, there’s deuced little in anything,” said Havens.

“Well, I believe that’s a Christian fact,” cried the other. “What I want is a secret, get hold of a rich man by the right place, and make him squeal.”

“I suppose you know it’s not thought to be the ticket,” returned Havens.

“I don’t care for that; it’s good enough for me,” cried the man from Glasgow, stoutly. “The only devil of it is, a fellow can never find a secret in a place like the South Seas: only in London and Paris.”

“M’Gibbon’s been reading some dime novel, I suppose,” said one club-man.

“He’s been reading ‘Aurora Floyd,’” remarked another.

“And what if I have?” cried M’Gibbon. “It’s all true. Look at the newspapers! It’s just your confounded ignorance that sets you snickering. I tell you, it’s as much a trade as underwriting, and a dashed sight more honest.”

The sudden acrimony of these remarks called Loudon (who was a man of peace) from his reserve. “It’s rather singular,” said he, “but I seem to have practised about all these means of livelihood.”

“Tit you effer find a nokket?” inquired the inarticulate German, eagerly.

“No. I have been most kinds of fool in my time,” returned Loudon, “but not the gold-digging variety. Every man has a sane spot somewhere.”

“Well, then,” suggested some one, “did you ever smuggle opium?”

“Yes, I did,” said Loudon.

“Was there money in that?”

“All the way,” responded Loudon.

“And perhaps you bought a wreck?” asked another.

“Yes, sir,” said Loudon.

“How did that pan out?” pursued the questioner.

“Well, mine was a peculiar kind of wreck,” replied Loudon. “I don’t know, on the whole, that I can recommend that branch of industry.”

“Did she break up?” asked some one.

“I guess it was rather I that broke down,” says Loudon. “Head not big enough.”

“Ever try the blackmail?” inquired Havens.

“Simple as you see me sitting here!” responded Dodd.

“Good business?”

“Well, I’m not a lucky man, you see,” returned the stranger. “It ought to have been good.”

“You had a secret?” asked the Glasgow man.

“As big as the State of Texas.”

“And the other man was rich?”

“He wasn’t exactly Jay Gould, but I guess he could buy these islands if he wanted.”

“Why, what was wrong, then? Couldn’t you get hands on him?”

“It took time, but I had him cornered at last; and then——”

“What then?”

“The speculation turned bottom up. I became the man’s bosom friend.”

“The deuce you did!”

“He couldn’t have been particular, you mean?” asked Dodd pleasantly. “Well, no; he’s a man of rather large sympathies.”

“If you’re done talking nonsense, Loudon,” said Havens, “let’s be getting to my place for dinner.”

Outside, the night was full of the roaring of the surf. Scattered lights glowed in the green thicket. Native women came by twos and threes out of the darkness, smiled and ogled the two whites, perhaps wooed them with a strain of laughter, and went by again, bequeathing to the air a heady perfume of palm-oil and frangipani blossom. From the club to Mr. Havens’s residence was but a step or two, and to any dweller in Europe they must have seemed steps in fairyland. If such an one could but have followed our two friends into the wide-verandahed house, sat down with them in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on the lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic food—the raw fish, the bread-fruit, the cooked bananas, the roast pig served with the inimitable miti, and that king of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and heard by fits and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, now railing within against invisible assistants, a certain comely young native lady in a sacque, who seemed too modest to be a member of the family, and too imperious to be less; and then if such an one were whisked again through space to Upper Tooting, or wherever else he honoured the domestic gods, “I have had a dream,” I think he would say, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes, in the familiar chimney-corner chair, “I have had a dream of a place, and I declare I believe it must be heaven.” But to Dodd and his entertainer, all this amenity of the tropic night, and all these dainties of the island table, were grown things of custom; and they fell to meat like men who were hungry, and drifted into idle talk like men who were a trifle bored.

The scene in the club was referred to.

“I never heard you talk so much nonsense, Loudon,” said the host.

“Well, it seemed to me there was sulphur in the air, so I talked for talking,” returned the other. “But it was none of it nonsense.”

“Do you mean to say it was true?” cried Havens—“that about the opium and the wreck, and the black-mailing, and the man who became your friend?”

“Every last word of it,” said Loudon.

“You seem to have been seeing life,” returned the other.

“Yes, it’s a queer yarn,” said his friend; “if you think you would like, I’ll tell it you.”

Here follows the yarn of Loudon Dodd, not as he told it to his friend, but as he subsequently wrote it.

THE YARN