The thumb-screw and rack of Christendom struck with horror those of
my cannibal friends to whom I mentioned them.




CHAPTER XXII

The memorable game for the matches in the cocoanut-grove of Lam Kai
Oo.


Parables are commonly found in books. In a few words on a printed
page one sees a universal problem made small and clear, freed from
those large uncertainties and whimsies of chance that make life in
the whole so confusing to the vision. It was my fortune to see, in
the valley of Atuona on Hiva-oa, a series of incidents which were
at the time a whirl of unbelievable merriment, yet which slowly
clarified themselves into a parable, while I sat later considering
them on the leaf-shaded _paepae_ of the House of the Golden Bed.

They began one afternoon when I dropped down to the palace to have a
smoke with M. L'Hermier des Plantes, the governor. As I mounted the
steps I beheld on the veranda the governor, stern, though perspiring,
in his white ducks, confronting a yellowish stranger on crutches who
pleaded in every tone of anguish for some boon denied him.

"_Non!_ No! _Ned!_" said the governor, poly-linguistically emphatic.
"It cannot be done!" He dropped into a chair and poured himself an
inch of Pernod, as the defeated suitor turned to me in despair.