160 MYSTIC ISLES 



ing with violence over the reef, breaks on the beach. 

 Now was due such a wave, and its possibihties of height 

 and destruction caused Hvely argument between the 

 traders and the old salts. More than a dozen retired 

 seamen, mostly Frenchmen, found their Snug Harbor 

 in the Cercle Bougainville, where liberty, equality, and 

 fraternity had their home, and where Joseph bounded 

 when orders for' the figurative splicing of the main- 

 brace came from the tables. 



George Goeltz, a sea-rover, who had cast his anchor 

 in the club after fifty years of equatorial voyaging, was, 

 on account of his seniority, knowledge of wind and reef, 

 and, most of all, his never-failing bonhommie, keeper of 

 barometer, thermometer, telescopes, charts, and records. 

 When I had my jorum of the eminent physician's Sa- 

 moan prescription before me, I barkened to the wisdom 

 of the mariners. 



Captain William Pincher, who had at my first meet- 

 ing informed me he was known as Lying Bill, explained 

 to me that some ignorant landsmen stated that this tidal 

 regularity was caused by the steady drift of the trade- 

 winds at certain hours of the day. 



"That don't go," said he, "for the tides are the same 

 whether there 's a gale o' wind or a calm. I 've seen 

 the tide 'ighest 'ere in Papeete when there was n't wind 

 to fill a jib, and right 'ere on th-e leeward side of the 

 bloody island, sheltered from the breeze. How about 

 it at night, too, when the trade quits? The bleedin' 

 tide rises and falls just the same at just the same time. 

 Those trades don't even push the tidal waves because 

 they always come from the west'ard, and the trades are 

 from the east." 



