"Speak for yourself, sir. I'm a Methodist. 'Tain't that they mix themselves up in the doings. But--well, you haven't lived through the merry month of May on Naapu. I tell you, this blessed island ain't big enough to hold all that froth without everybody feeling it. Just because folks don't know what's going on up yonder it kind of relaxes 'em. I don't say the Kanakas do anything they shouldn't, except get drunk, and joy-ride down waterfalls, and keep up an infernal tom-toming. But it sort of gets on your nerves. And I wouldn't call Naapu straitlaced, either. Everybody seems to feel called on to liquor up, this time o' year. If it isn't one pretext it's another. Things folks have been kind of hesitating over, in the name of morals, they start out and perform, regardless. The authorities, they get worried because a Kanaka's spree lands him, like as not, in a blackbirder. Mighty queer craft hang round at this season. There ain't supposed to be anything doing in these blessed islands that ain't aboveboard, but 'tisn't as though the place was run by Americans." "And I am to watch Ching Po? Where does he come in?" "I wish't I knew. He makes money out of it somehow. Dope, I suppose. Old man Dubois ain't his only customer, by a long shot." "Ching Po isn't likely to go near French Eva, is he? They don't speak, I've noticed." "No, they don't. But that Chink's little ways are apt to be indirect. She's afraid of him--afraid of the dust under her feet, as you might say." Stires puffed meditatively at his pipe. Then a piratical-looking customer intervened, and I left. Leisurely, all this, and not significant to the unpeeled eye. And then, within twenty-four hours of the time when I had left Stires, things began to happen. It was as if a tableau had suddenly decided to become a "movie." All those fixed types began to dash about and register the most inconvenient emotions. Let me set down a few facts diary fashion. To begin with, when I got up the next morning, Joe had disappeared. No sign of breakfast, no smell of coffee. It was late for breakfast at Dubois's, and I started out to get my own. There were no eggs, and I sauntered over to French Eva's to purchase a few. The town looked queer to me as I walked its grassy streets. Only when I turned into the lane that led to French Eva's did I realize why. It was swept clean of natives. There weren't any. Not a stevedore, not a fisherman, not a brown fruit-vender did I see.