A throng surrounded the pair of combatants.  The worn cards had been oiled and dried, and though the ominous faces of the tiki upon them shone bravely, doubtless they were weary of strife.  The pipe was made to smoke; Kivi puffed it and so did all who had joined in the purchase of the case from the thieves of Cantonese.  Then the cards were dealt by Kivi, who had won the cut.

O Lalala and he eyed each other like Japanese wrestlers before the grapple.  Their eyes were slits as they put up the ante of five packets each.  O Lalala opened the pot for five packets and Kivi, nudged by his backers, feverishly balanced them.  He took three cards, O Lalala but one.  Standing behind the Tahitian, I saw that he had no cards of value, but coolly he threw thirty packets upon the mat.  The others shuddered, for Kivi had drawn deuces to a pair of kings.  They made the pipe glow again.  They puffed it; they spat; they put their heads together, and he threw down his cards.

Then calmly the Tahitian laid down his own, and they saw that they could have beaten him.  They shouted in dismay, and withdrew Kivi, who after some palaver went away with them into the darkness.

One or two candlenut torches dimly illumined the figures of the squatting women who remained.  Upon the sugar-cane mat O Lalala stretched himself at ease, closing his eyes.  A silence broken only by the stealthy noises of the forest closed upon us.  Teata, her dark eyes wide, looked fearfully over her shoulder and crept close to me.  In a low voice she said that the absent players had thrown earth over their shoulders, stamped, and called upon Po, the Marquesan deity of darkness, yet it had not availed them.  Now they went to make magic to those at whose very mention she shuddered, not naming them.

We waited, while the torches sputtered lower, and a dank breath of the forest crept between the trees.  O Lalala appeared to sleep, though when Apporo attempted to withdraw a card he pinned it with his crutch.

It was half an hour before the players returned.  Kivi crouched to his place without a word, and the others arranged themselves behind him in fixed array, as though they had a cabalistic number-formation in mind.

Fresh torches were made, and many disputed the privilege of holding them, as they controlled one’s view of the mat.  O Lalala sat imperturbable, waiting.  At last all was ready.  The light fell upon the giant limbs and huge torsos of the men, picking out arabesques of tattooing and catching ruddy gleams from red pareus.  The women, in crimson gowns caught up to the waist, their luxuriant hair adorned with flowers and phosphorescent fungus, their necks hung with the pink peppers of Chile, squatted in a close ring about the players.

The lame man took up the pack, shuffled it, and handed it to Kivi to cut.  Then Kivi solemnly stacked before him the eighty-five packets of matches, all that remained in the islands.  Five packs went upon the mat for ante, and Kivi very slowly picked up his cards.