76 MYSTIC ISLES 



ity, but had the ease of the philosopher and also his 

 detachment. It was plain he did the best he could with 

 his garb, and was entirely undisturbed, and perhaps 

 even unmindful, of its ludicrousness. He was as serene 

 as Diogenes must have been when he crawled naked 

 from his tub into the sun. 



We talked first of the horses in the lagoon a dozen 

 yards from us, their grooms or their owners submerging 

 them, and squatting on the ground to chat as the horses 

 wallowed willingly in five feet of salt water. We 

 agreed that the Tahitians were as bad drivers as the 

 Chinese, and that they were, wittingly or unwittingly, 

 cruel to their beasts of burden. This led to a discussion 

 of native traits, and he was caustic in his castigation of 

 the Tahitians. He asked me my name and what 

 brought me to Tahiti ; and when, wanting to be as honest- 

 spoken as he, I said, "Romance, adventure," he burst 

 out that I was crazv. 



"I have been here seventeen years," he said bitterly 

 — "me, Ivan Stroganoff, who was once happy as secre- 

 tary to the governor of Irkutsk ! I was better off when 

 I was on the Merrimac fighting the Monitor, or with 

 Mosby, the guerilla, than I am in this accursed island. 

 I think a man is mad who can leave Tahiti and stays 

 here. I wish I could go away. I would like to die 

 elsewhere. I am eighty years old, I starve here, and I 

 sleep in a chicken-coop in the suburbs." 



"You are lodged exactly as was Charlie Stoddard, 

 who wrote 'South Sea Idylls,' " I interposed. 



"They have lied always, those writers about Tahiti," 

 said Ivan Stroganoff. "Melville, Loti, jNIoerenhout, 

 Pallander, your Stevenson, — I don't know that Stod- 



