494 MYSTIC ISLES 



same experience had come to him. Yet that they were 

 dear to him was evident. They were concerned with 

 his vigorous manhood, though he was a youthful grand- 

 father when the Casco brought Robert Louis Stevenson 

 to Tahiti to hve in the house of Ori. I reminded him of 

 their exchanging names in blood brothership, so that 

 Stevenson was Teriitera, and Ori was Rui. Rui was his 

 pronunciation of Louis, as all his family in Tautira 

 called the Scotch author. Ori-a-Ori had known them 

 all, his mother, his wife, and his loved stepson, Lloyd 

 Osborne. Nine weeks they had stayed in his house, 

 which the Princess Moe, Pomare's sister-in-law, had 

 asked Ori to vacate for the visitors before he knew them, 

 but which he was glad he had done when they became 

 friends. Ori and his family had retained only one room 

 for their intimate effects, and had slept in a native house 

 on the site of my own. On the wild lawn across the 

 road, before his home, Rui had given his generous feast, 

 costing him eighty dollars at a time when he was most 

 uncertain of funds, and gaining him the reputation of 

 the richest man known to the Tautirans, the owner of 

 the Silver Ship, as the Casco was called by the Paumo- 

 tuans, and by Stevenson afterward. There were four 

 or five Tahitians I knew here who remembered the 

 amuraa maa of the sick man, who had his own schooner, 

 his pahi tira piti; but only Ori retained the deep, though 

 misty, impression made by a meeting of hearts in warm- 

 est kinship. 



"Rui gave me knives and forks and dishes from the 

 schooner to remember him by," said the chief, abstract- 

 edly. "Tati, my relation, has them. I have not those 



