Two days subsequent to our amble we were invited to a grand banquet which led to disturbing problems and momentous decision on our part. This feast was our formal welcome; the keys of the islands, so to speak, were presented to us. There were ladies present--and everything. It was served in a special clearing lighted by the moon and countless _anchoridae_ tied by their legs in festoons, a procedure which causes them to open and shut their lambent eyes very rapidly, and gave a quaint cinema effect to the scene. After counting the courses up to twenty-seven I lost as each was accompanied by a new brand of island potion. Fortunately we were seated on the ground. Triplett was in his glory. If I have failed to mention recently our hard-bitten old navigator it is only because we had seen comparatively little of him. Resting on his titular dignity as chief he seldom appeared in public, spending most of his time up his tree snoozing or reading an old copy of the New Bedford "Argus," which he was never without. Tonight, however, he blazed forth in full regalia, wearing his best blue marble, his visor-cap wreathed with nabiscus blossoms, his case-hardened countenance lighted with conviviality. Following an interminable period of eating and drinking came a long speech by Baahaabaa which, like most after-dinner speeches, meant nothing to me. Captain Triplett replied. The gist of Triplett's remarks, memorized from the "Argus," were taken from the 1916 report of the New Bedford Board of Trade. When he proclaimed that "besides cotton goods, 100,000 pianos were turned out yearly and 8,500 derby hats every day," his audience, set off by Whinney, burst into uproarious applause. The climax was reached when he lowered his voice dramatically and said, "And keep always in mind, O Baahaabaa and friends, that the New England Fur Company uses daily 35,000 rabbit pelts! Gentlemen, I thank you." Pandemonium broke loose. Triplett was showered with congratulations. Music and dancing followed, among others an amazing performance by a sturdy youth, Zambao-Zambino (Young-Man-Proud-of-His-Waist-Line) who rendered a solo by striking his distended anatomy with his clenched fist, varying the tone by relaxing or tightening the abdominal muscles. Whinney sang a very dreary arrangement of "Mandalay"--his one parlor trick; Swank did an imitation of Elsie Janis's imitation of Ethel Barrymore and I sang "The Wreck of the Julie Plante," an amusing ballad describing the loss by drowning of an entire ship's company. But the climax was yet to come.