Mystic Isles of the South Seas. Frederick O'Brien

14
Ben Fuller, the Australian theatrical manager, frowned on him. Fuller
was as round as a barrel, and he also was certain of the remedies
for a sick world.
"How you 're goin' a get any bloody fun with no roast beef, no mutton,
no puddin', and let alone a drop of ale and a pipe?"
The Swiss smiled beatifically.
"You can get rid of all those desires," he said.
"My Gawd! I don't want to get rid o' them, I don't. I'm bringing up
my kiddies right, and I'm a proper family man, but I want my meat
and my bread and my puddin'. The world needs proper entertainment;
that's what'll cure the troubles."
The Swiss was also ardent in attention to the women aboard, and I
wondered if there was a new school of self-denial. The old celibate
monks eschewed women, but had Gargantuan appetites, which they
satisfied with meat pasties, tubs of ale, and vats of wine.
There were two Tahitians aboard, both females. One was an oldish
woman, ugly and waspish. She counted her beads and spoke to me in
French of the consolations of the Catholic religion. She had been to
America for an operation, but despaired of ever being well, and so
was melancholy and devout. I talked to her about Tahiti, that island
which the young Darwin wrote, "must forever remain classical to the
voyager in the South Seas," and which, since I had read "Rarahu"
as a boy, had fascinated me and drawn me to it. She warned me.
"Prenez-garde vous, monsieur!" she said. "There are evils there,
but I am ashamed of my people."
The other was about twenty-two years old, slender, kohl-eyed,
and black-tressed. She was dressed in the gayest colors of
bourgeois fashion in San Francisco, with jade ear-rings and diamond
ornaments. Her face was of a lemon-cream hue, with dark shadows
under her long-lashed eyes. Her form was singularly svelt, curving,
suggestive of the rounded stalk of a young cocoa-palm, her bosom
molded in a voluptuous reserve. Her father, a clergyman, had cornered
the vanilla-bean market in Tahiti, and she was bringing an automobile