Not long ago he was overgrown with fat, obscured to view, and a burthen to himself.  Captains visiting the island advised him to walk; and though it broke the habits of a life and the traditions of his rank, he practised the remedy with benefit.  His corpulence is now portable; you would call him lusty rather than fat; but his gait is still dull, stumbling, and elephantine.  He neither stops nor hastens, but goes about his business with an implacable deliberation.  We could never see him and not be struck with his extraordinary natural means for the theatre:  a beaked profile like Dante’s in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the eye brilliant, imperious, and inquiring:  for certain parts, and to one who could have used it, the face was a fortune.  His voice matched it well, being shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird’s.  Where there are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow them if they were set, and none to criticise, he dresses—­as Sir Charles Grandison lived—­’to his own heart.’  Now he wears a woman’s frock, now a naval uniform; now (and more usually) figures in a masquerade costume of his own design:  trousers and a singular jacket with shirt tails, the cut and fit wonderful for island workmanship, the material always handsome, sometimes green velvet, sometimes cardinal red silk.  This masquerade becomes him admirably.  In the woman’s frock he looks ominous and weird beyond belief.  I see him now come pacing towards me in the cruel sun, solitary, a figure out of Hoffmann.

A visit on board ship, such as that at which we now assisted, makes a chief part and by far the chief diversion of the life of Tembinok’.  He is not only the sole ruler, he is the sole merchant of his triple kingdom, Apemama, Aranuka, and Kuria, well-planted islands.  The taro goes to the chiefs, who divide as they please among their immediate adherents; but certain fish, turtles—­which abound in Kuria,—­and the whole produce of the coco-palm, belong exclusively to Tembinok’.  ‘A’ cobra berong me,’ observed his majesty with a wave of his hand; and he counts and sells it by the houseful.  ‘You got copra, king?’ I have heard a trader ask.  ’I got two, three outches,’ his majesty replied:  ‘I think three.’  Hence the commercial importance of Apemama, the trade of three islands being centred there in a single hand; hence it is that so many whites have tried in vain to gain or to preserve a footing; hence ships are adorned, cooks have special orders, and captains array themselves in smiles, to greet the king.  If he be pleased with his welcome and the fare he may pass days on board, and, every day, and sometimes every hour, will be of profit to the ship.  He oscillates between the cabin, where he is entertained with strange meats, and the trade-room, where he enjoys the pleasures of shopping on a scale to match his person.  A few obsequious attendants squat by the house door, awaiting his least signal.  In the boat, which has been suffered to drop astern,