[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

CHAPTER II

MAEI, TONGOA, EPI AND MALEKULA

MAEI is a small island whose natives have nearly all
disappeared, as is the case on most of its neighbours.
There is one small plantation, with the agent of which
the Resident had business. After we had passed the
narrow inlet through the reef, we landed, to find the
agent in a peculiar, half-mad condition. He pre~
tended to suffer from fever, but it was evident that
alcohol had a good deal to do with it, too. The man
made strange faces, could hardly talk and was quite
unable to write; he said the fever had deprived him
of the power of using his fingers. He was asked to
dinner on board, and as he could not speak French
nor the Resident English, negotiations were carried
on in biche la mar, a language in which it is im-
possible to talk about anything but the simplest
matters of everyday life. Things got still worse

when the agent became more and more intoxicated, V
in spite of the small quantities of liquor we allowed
him. I had to act as interpreter, a most ungrateful
task, as the planter soon began to insult the Resident,
and I had to translate his remarks and the Resident’s
answers. At last, funny as the whole affair was in a
way, it became very tiresome; happily, matters came
to a sudden close by the planter’s falling under the