Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 13, 1923 — page 90: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

By ALBERT DORRINGTON WHITE queen had never reigned on A the island of Vahiti, with its con- tented armies of plantation work- ers, recruited mostly from the Solomons and Ellice groups. Yet, Paula Wyngate might have worn a crown of pearls as an emblem of her popularity with the dark and white people who flourish among the fifty trade islands of the little-known Vahiti Archi- pelago. Socially she ruled within the wind- swept beach consulates, where French, American and British traders foregathered at certain periods of the year to dance and admire each others’ wives, after the custom of men long exiled from civilization. Her husband, George Vandelour Wyn- gate, represented an affluent Dutch firm whose headquarters were in Macassar. The foreign consuls with the ugly wives helped Wyngate. They revealed to him the secret hoards of crafty headsmen, the uncounted barrels of shark oil, the new coffee lands, the ungathered stores of vanilla, camphor and sandalwood. Every one threw business in Wyngate’s direction because it pleased his wife and kept her in the archipelago, where her society was as badly needed as music at a dance. The Wyngates lived in a pretty bunga- low, sheltered on the ocean side by belts of pandanus and coco palms. In ‘the rear of the bungalow stood a commodious trade house, where George, in his white jeans, met the little schooner captains and canoe- men from the outlying islands. Paula Wyngate’s mail had arrived from Songolo, where her sister Odette was living with the wife of Jimmy Blake, commis- sioner of customs for the Chinese govern- ment. Swinging in a silk-tasseled hammock on the lagoon side of the bungalow, Paula picked out her sister’s letter from a pile of others. Odette was engaged to young Frank Dillon, chief officer of the City of Peking, running between San Francisco, Singapore and Batavia. Young Dillon was a good sailor, but his scanty pay would 352 es ORE) REA SO gi OS, me COPMICLOOOKS (E@)