OF THE SOUTH SEAS 101 



now, and will bring the highest pretty soon. I have 

 bought every one I could to hold for a raise." 



Polonsky was a study in sheeny hues. He was 

 twenty-seven, his black and naturally curled hair was 

 very thin, there were eight or nine teeth that answered 

 no call from his meat, and he wore in his right eye- 

 socket a round glass, with no rim or string, held by a 

 puckering of cheek and brow, giving him a quizzical, 

 stage-like stare, and twisting his nose into a ripple of 

 tiny wrinkles. He weighed, say, one hundred pounds 

 or less, was bent, but with a fresh complexion and active 

 step. I saw him rise naked from his cot one morning, 

 and the first thing he put on was the rimless monocle. 

 The natives, who name every one, called him ''Matati- 

 tiahoe/' "the one-windowed man." He had journeyed 

 about the world, poked into some queer places, and in 

 Japan had himself tattooed. On his narrow chest he 

 had a terrible legendary god of Nippon, and on his 

 arms a cock and a skeleton, the latter with a fan 

 and a lantern. On his belly was limned a nude woman. 

 He had certain other decorations the fame of which had 

 been bruited wide so that a keen curiosity existed to see 

 them, and they were discussed in whispers by white 

 femininity and with many ''AuesT of astonishment by 

 the brown. They were Pompeiian friezes in their un- 

 conventionality of subject and treatment. 



Llewellyn, McHenry, David, and I accompanied the 

 count to his residence on the outskirts of Papeete to 

 taste a vintage of Burgundy he had sent him from 

 Beaune. Like most modern houses in Tahiti, his was 

 solely utilitarian, and was built by a former American 

 consul. It exactly ministered to the comforts of a de- 



