He was short and of a jaundiced hue, his soft brown eyes set
slightly aslant. Although lame, he had an alertness and poise
unusual in the sea's spawn of these beaches. In Tahitian, Marquesan,
and French, with now and then an English word, he explained that he,
a Tahitian marooned on Hiva-oa from a schooner because of a broken
leg, wished to pass the tedium of his exile in an innocent game of
cards.

"I desire a mere permission to buy two packs of cards at the
Chinaman's," he begged. "I would teach my neighbors here the _jeu de_
pokaree. I have learned it on a voyage to San Francisco. It is
Americaine. It is like life, not altogether luck. One must think
well to play it. I doubt not that you know that game."

Now gambling is forbidden in these isles. It is told that throughout
the southern oceans such a madness possessed the people to play the
white men's games of chance that in order to prevent constant
bloodshed in quarrels a strict interdiction was made by the
conquerors. Of course whites here are always excepted from such
sin-stopping rules, and merchants keep a small stock of cards for
their indulgence.

"But why two packs?" I asked the agitated Tahitian.

"_Mais, Monsieur_, that is the way I was taught. We played with ten
or fourteen in the circle, and as it is merely _pour passer le temps_,
more of my poor brother Kanakas can enjoy it with two packs."

He was positively abased, for no Tahitian says "_Kanaka_" of himself.