OF THE SOUTH SEAS 23 



glass of milk and a piece of toast, but took longer than 

 I did to bolt melon, bacon and eggs, toast, coffee, and 

 marmalade. He sold the pianos his family had made 

 for a hundred years, and munched all about the world. 

 He professed rugged health, and never tired of dancing; 

 but he looked drawn and melancholy, and had naught of 

 the rugged masculinity of the bolters. Once or twice he 

 drank in my company a cocktail, and he munched each 

 sip as if it were mutton. He would occupy the entire 

 dinner-time with one baked potato. I was endeared to 

 him because I had known his master, Fletcher, and with 

 him, too, had chewed a glass of wine in the patio of the 

 Army and Navy Club in Manila. I longed to pit the 

 Swiss and Herr Gluck in argument, but in sober thought 

 had to give the laurel to the latter, because, in case of 

 stress, one might, with his system, live on a trifle, while 

 raw, nourishing food might be difficult to get in quan- 

 tity. 



Most of the passengers were Australians and New- 

 Zealanders returning home, and only a few were bound 

 for Tahiti — the Tahitian women, the Swiss, Hallman 

 and his son, and M. Leboucher, a young merchant, born 

 there, of a Spanish mother. William McBirney of 

 County Antrim, but long in Raratonga, an island two 

 days' steaming from Tahiti, was going back to his 

 adopted home. 



"Sure," he said, "I 'm never happy away from the 

 sound of the surf on the reef and the swish of the cocoa- 

 nuts. I was fourteen years in the British army in Eng- 

 land when I made up my mind to quit civilization. I 

 put it to the missus, a London woman, and she was for 

 it. I 've had nearly ten years now in the Cook group. 



