On a table were bottles of absinthe and champagne, and several demijohns of red wine stood on the floor.  All our company attacked the table freight and drank the warm champagne.

A seamy-visaged Frenchman, Pierre Guillitoue, the village butcher—­a philosopher and anarchist, he told me—­rapped with a bottle on the veranda railing.  The governor, in every inch of gold lace possible, made a gallant figure as he rose and faced the people.  His whiskers were aglow with dressing.  The ceremony began with an address by a native, Haabunai.

Intrepreted by Guillitoue, Haabunai said that the Marquesans were glad to have a new governor, a wise man who would cure their ills, a just ruler, and a friend; then speaking directly to his own people, he praised extravagantly the newcomer, so that Guillitoue choked in his translation, and ceased, and mixed himself a glass of absinthe and water.

The governor replied briefly in French.  He said that he had come in their interest; that he would not cheat them or betray them; that he would make them well if they were sick.  The French flag was their flag; the French people loved them.  The Marquesans listened without interest, as if he spoke of some one in Tibet who wanted to sell a green elephant.

In the South Seas a meeting out-of-doors means a dance.  The Polynesians have ever made this universal human expression of the rhythmic principle of motion the chief evidence of emotion, and particularly of elation.  Civilization has all but stifled it in many islands.  Christianity has made it a sin.  It dies hard, for it is the basic outlet of strong natural feeling, and the great group entertainment of these peoples.

[Illustration:  Andre Bauda, Commissaire]

[Illustration:  The public dance in the garden]

The speeches done, the governor suggested that the national spirit be interpreted to him in pantomine.

“They must be enlivened with alcohol or they will not move,” said Guillitoue.

“Mon dieu!” he replied.  “It is the ‘Folies Bergere’ over again!  Give them wine!”

Bauda ordered Flag, the native gendarme, and Song of the Nightingale, a prisoner, to carry a demijohn of Bordeaux wine to the garden.  With two glasses they circulated the claret until each Marquesan had a pint or so.  Song of the Nightingale was a middle-aged savage, with a wicked, leering face, and whiskers from his ears to the corners of his mouth, surely a strange product of the Marquesan race, none of whose men will permit any hair to grow on lip or cheek.  While Song circulated the wine M. Bauda enlightened me as to the crime that had made him prisoner.  He was serving eighteen months for selling cocoanut brandy.

When the cask was emptied the people began the dance.  Three rows were formed, one of women between two of men, in Indian file facing the veranda.  Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale brought forth the drums.  These were about four feet high, barbaric instruments of skin stretched over hollow logs, and the “Boom-Boom” that came from them when they were struck by the hands of the two strong men was thrilling and strange.