The Moon and Sixpence

Chapter XLVI
H
AD
NOT
BEEN
in Tahiti long before I met Captain
Nichols. He came in one morning when I was
having breakfast on the terrace of the hotel and
introduced himself. He had heard that I was in-
terested in Charles Strickland, and announced
that he was come to have a talk about him. They
are as fond of gossip in Tahiti as in an English
village, and one or two enquiries I had made for
pictures by Strickland had been quickly spread.
I asked the stranger if he had breakfasted.
“ Yes; I have my coffee early,” he answered,
“but I don’t mind having a drop of whisky. ”
I called the Chinese boy.
“ You don’t think it’s too early?” said the Cap-
tain.
“ You and your liver must decide that between
you,” I replied.
“I’m practically a teetotaller,” he said, as he
poured himself out a good half-tumbler of Cana-
dian Club.
When he smiled he showed broken and
discoloured teeth. He was a very lean man, of no
more than average height, with gray hair cut
short and a stubbly gray moustache. He had not
shaved for a couple of days. His face was deeply
lined, burned brown by long exposure to the sun,
and he had a pair of small blue eyes which were
astonishingly shifty. They moved quickly, follow-
ing my smallest gesture, and they gave him the
look of a very thorough rogue. But at the mo-
ment he was all heartiness and good-fellowship.
He was dressed in a bedraggled suit of khaki,
and his hands would have been all the better for
a wash.
“I knew Strickland well,” he said, as he leaned
back in his chair and lit the cigar I had offered
him. “It’s through me he came out to the is-
lands.”
“Where did you meet him?” I asked.
“In Marseilles.”

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177
Somerset Maugham
“What were you doing there?”
He gave me an ingratiating smile.
“ Well, I guess I was on the beach.”
My friend’s appearance suggested that he was
now in the same predicament, and I prepared
myself to cultivate an agreeable acquaintance.
The society of beach-combers always repays the
small pains you need be at to enjoy it. They are
easy of approach and affable in conversation.
They seldom put on airs, and the offer of a drink
is a sure way to their hearts. You need no labori-
ous steps to enter upon familiarity with them,
and you can earn not only their confidence, but
their gratitude, by turning an attentive ear to
their discourse. They look upon conversation as
the great pleasure of life, thereby proving the
excellence of their civilisation, and for the most