MYSTIC ISLES 269 



when I awake. There are no windows in my connect- 

 ing rooms in the Annexe. The sun rises through their 

 wallless front, and sets through their opening to the bal- 

 cony. What more hberal dispensation of nature? I 

 am under the shower in two minutes, long enough to go 

 down the curved staircase, with its admirable rosewood 

 balustrade, and through the rear veranda to the room in 

 which the large cement basin serves for bath and laun- 

 dry and to lend a minute to the Christchurch Kid, the 

 prize-fighter, to inform me that he is to open a school 

 of the manly art, with diplomas for finished scholars and 

 rewards for excellence. The recitals are to be public, a 

 fee charged, and all ambitious pupils are to be guaran- 

 teed open examination in pairs and a just decision. 

 The Kid and Cowan are to be hors de combat. 



A daughter of a French governor of the Low Archi- 

 pelago is in the basin, the door ajar, and the spray blind- 

 ing her to my presence. She is seventeen, cafe au lait — 

 beaucoup de lait, kohl-eyed, meter-tressed, and slim- 

 bodied. She sings the himene of the battle of the limes 

 and coal and potatoes, with a new stanza concerning the 

 return of the Noa-Noa, and the vengeance of the Tahi- 

 tian braves upon the pigs of Peretania, Britain. 



"la ora na! Bonjour, Goo' night!" she says impar- 

 tially, and modestly slips her pareu about her. 



''la ora na oeT I reply. "All goes well?" 



"By cripe' yais; dam' goo'!" she answers, and goes 

 humming on her way to her shanty in the yard. She 

 is the maid of my chamber, gentle, willing, but never to 

 be found for service. She learns English from the Kid, 

 the rubber-legged boot-black, and other gentleman ad- 

 venturers and tars of America and Europe, and she 



