第95章 THE KING OF APEMAMA:THE ROYAL TRADERTHERE(3)

'How much you got?I take him all,'replied his majesty,and became the lord of seventeen boxes at two dollars a cake.Or again,the merchant feigns the article is not for sale,is private property,an heirloom or a gift;and the trick infallibly succeeds.

Thwart the king and you hold him.His autocratic nature rears at the affront of opposition.He accepts it for a challenge;sets his teeth like a hunter going at a fence;and with no mark of emotion,scarce even of interest,stolidly piles up the price.Thus,for our sins,he took a fancy to my wife's dressing-bag,a thing entirely useless to the man,and sadly battered by years of service.Early one forenoon he came to our house,sat down,and abruptly offered to purchase it.I told him I sold nothing,and the bag at any rate was a present from a friend;but he was acquainted with these pretexts from of old,and knew what they were worth and how to meet them.Adopting what I believe is called 'the object method,'he drew out a bag of English gold,sovereigns and half-sovereigns,and began to lay them one by one in silence on the table;at each fresh piece reading our faces with a look.In vain I continued to protest I was no trader;he deigned not to reply.

There must have been twenty pounds on the table,he was still going on,and irritation had begun to mingle with our embarrassment,when a happy idea came to our delivery.Since his majesty thought so much of the bag,we said,we must beg him to accept it as a present.It was the most surprising turn in Tembinok's experience.

He perceived too late that his persistence was unmannerly;hung his head a while in silence;then,lifting up a sheepish countenance,'I 'shamed,'said the tyrant.It was the first and the last time we heard him own to a flaw in his behaviour.Half an hour after he sent us a camphor-wood chest worth only a few dollars -but then heaven knows what Tembinok'had paid for it.

Cunning by nature,and versed for forty years in the government of men,it must not be supposed that he is cheated blindly,or has resigned himself without resistance to be the milch-cow of the passing trader.His efforts have been even heroic.Like Nakaeia of Makin,he has owned schooners.More fortunate than Nakaeia,he has found captains.Ships of his have sailed as far as to the colonies.He has trafficked direct,in his own bottoms,with New Zealand.And even so,even there,the world-enveloping dishonesty of the white man prevented him;his profit melted,his ship returned in debt,the money for the insurance was embezzled,and when the CORONET came to be lost,he was astonished to find he had lost all.At this he dropped his weapons;owned he might as hopefully wrestle with the winds of heaven;and like an experienced sheep,submitted his fleece thenceforward to the shearers.He is the last man in the world to waste anger on the incurable;accepts it with cynical composure;asks no more in those he deals with than a certain decency of moderation;drives as good a bargain as he can;and when he considers he is more than usually swindled,writes it in his memory against the merchant's name.He once ran over to me a list of captains and supercargoes with whom he had done business,classing them under three heads:'He cheat a litty'-'He cheat plenty'-and 'I think he cheat too much.'For the first two classes he expressed perfect toleration;sometimes,but not always,for the third.I was present when a certain merchant was turned about his business,and was the means (having a considerable influence ever since the bag)of patching up the dispute.Even on the day of our arrival there was like to have been a hitch with Captain Reid:the ground of which is perhaps worth recital.Among goods exported specially for Tembinok'there is a beverage known (and labelled)as Hennessy's brandy.It is neither Hennessy,nor even brandy;is about the colour of sherry,but is not sherry;tastes of kirsch,and yet neither is it kirsch.The king,at least,has grown used to this amazing brand,and rather prides himself upon the taste;and any substitution is a double offence,being at once to cheat him and to cast a doubt upon his palate.Asimilar weakness is to be observed in all connoisseurs.Now the last case sold by the EQUATOR was found to contain a different and I would fondly fancy a superior distillation;and the conversation opened very black for Captain Reid.But Tembinok'is a moderate man.He was reminded and admitted that all men were liable to error,even himself;accepted the principle that a fault handsomely acknowledged should be condoned;and wound the matter up with this proposal:'Tuppoti I mi'take,you 'peakee me.Tuppoti you mi'take,I 'peakee you.Mo'betta.'

After dinner and supper in the cabin,a glass or two of 'Hennetti'-the genuine article this time,with the kirsch bouquet,-and five hours'lounging on the trade-room counter,royalty embarked for home.Three tacks grounded the boat before the palace;the wives were carried ashore on the backs of vassals;Tembinok'stepped on a railed platform like a steamer's gangway,and was borne shoulder high through the shallows,up the beach,and by an inclined plane,paved with pebbles,to the glaring terrace where he dwells.