OF THE SOUTH SEAS 59 



table, but not when tourists, new-comers, were present. 

 Then the dignified Lovaina, repressing the oaths of 

 potvaliant skippers, putting her finger to her hps when 

 a bald assertion was imminent, said impressively: 



"That swears don't go! What you think? To give 

 bad name my good house?" 



Only when old-timers were gathered, between steam- 

 ships, when the schooners came in a drove from the 

 Paumotu atolls, and gold and silver rang on the table at 

 all hours, there was little restraint. 



With only one mail a month to disturb the monotony, 

 and but trifling interest in anj^thing north of the equa- 

 tor except prices of their commodities, these unre- 

 pressed rebels against the conventions and even the 

 laws of the Occident must have their fling. On that 

 camphor-wood chest had sat many a church-going 

 woman and dignified man of Europe or America, resi- 

 dent for a month or longer in Tahiti, and shuddered at 

 what they heard — shuddered and listened, eager to hear 

 those curious incidents and astonishing opinions about 

 life and affairs, and to mark the difference between this 

 and their own countries. It was without even comment 

 that people who at home or among the conventions 

 would be shocked at the subjects or their treatment, in 

 these islands listened thrilled or chucklingly to stories as 

 naked as the children. Double entendre is caviar to the 

 average man and woman of Tahiti, who call the un- 

 shrouded spade hy its aboriginal name. The Tahitians 

 were ever thus, and the French have not sought to correct 

 their ways. I heard Atupu, one of the girls of the 

 hotel, in a Rabelaisian passage of wit the while she 

 opened Seattle beer for thirsty Britishers, old residents, 



