Most of these details I gathered afterward. At the moment I guessed just enough of the truth not to be wholly mystified. The watery sputtering of the _Winship's_ twenty-five horse-power engine grew faint. Then, with a ghostly gleam of her mainsail in the starlight, she was gone. I was thinking, "By Jove! I wouldn't have missed this experience for all the copra in the Cloud of Islands!" I was glad that there were still adventures of that sort to be had in a humdrum world. It was so absurd, so fantastically unreal as to fit nothing but reality. And the event of it was exactly what I had wanted all the time without knowing it. There was no reason why I shouldn't stop at Rutiaro. To be sure, I was shortly to have met my friend Nordhoff at Papeete, but our rendezvous was planned to be broken. We were wandering in the South Pacific as opportunity and inclination should direct, which, I take it, is the only way to wander.
For a few moments I was so deeply occupied with my own thoughts that I was not conscious of what was taking place around me. All the village was gathered there, watching the departing schooner. As she vanished a loud murmur ran through the crowd, like a sough of wind through trees--a long-drawn-out Polynesian, "_Aue!_" indicative of astonishment, indignation, pity. Paumotuan sympathies are large, and I had been the victim of treachery, they thought, and was silently grieving at the prospect of a long exile. They gathered around, patting me on the back in their odd way, expressing their condolences as best they could, but I soon relieved their minds on that score. Then Huirai, the constable with the cigarette-card insignia, pushed his way through with the first show of authority I had seen him make.
"I been Frisco," he said, with an odd accent on the last syllable. He had made the journey once as a stoker on one of the mail boats. Then he added, "You go to hell, me," his eyes shining with pride that he could be of service as a reminder of home to an exiled American. He was about to take charge of me, in view of his knowledge of English, but the chief waved him away with a gesture of authority. I was to be his guest, he said, at any rate for the present. He began his duties as host by entertaining me at dinner at Moy Ling's store. I was a little surprised that we did not go to his house for the meal until I remembered that the Chinaman had received the only consignment of exotic food left by the _Winship_. Puarei ordered the feast with the discrimination of a gourmet and the generosity of a sailor on shore leave for the first time in months. We had smoked herring for _hors-d'œuvre_, followed by soup, curried chicken and rice, edible birds' nests flavored with crab meat, from China, and white bread. For dessert we had small Chinese pears preserved in vinegar, which we ate out of the tin--"Woman Brand Pears," the label said. There was a colored picture on it of a white woman, in old-fashioned puffed sleeves and a long skirt, seated in a garden, while a Chinaman served her deferentially with pears out of the same kind of a container. Underneath was printed in English: "These pears will be found highly stimulating. We respectfully submit them to our customers." That was the first evidence I had seen of China's bid for export trade in tinned fruit. "Stimulating" may not have been just the word, but I liked the touch of Chinese courtesy which followed it. It didn't seem out of place, even coming from a canning factory.