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There was a time when each grove of breadfruit had its owners, who guarded it for their own use, and even each tree had its allotted proprietor, or perhaps several. Density of population everywhere causes each mouthful of food to be counted. I have known in Ceylon an English judge who was called upon to decide the legal ownership of one 2520th part of ten cocoanut-trees.
It was not a very substantial affair, the four corner-posts being the strongest portion of it, formed as they were by the trunks of four standing cocoanut-trees, the sides and roof being wattled and afterwards thatched with palm-leaves.
I opened my eyes, and he put his fingers to his lips. I dressed, and went with him in the old surrey. We drove through the night along the Broom Road. Once past the cemetery we were in the country. The cocoanut-trees were gray ghosts against the dark foliage and trunks of the breadfruits and the sugar cane; the reef was a faint gleam of white over the lagoon and a subdued sound of distant waters.
The streams, as I have said, are shallow, and the ground low, neatly cultivated with Indian corn, and abounding in cocoanut-trees. Behind Magnarabunbang there is a narrow strip of low ground, which becomes wider as it advances to the eastward, with here and there moderate elevations.
The bay of Atuona, narrow between high cliffs covered with cocoanut-trees, was the scene of my lessons. The tide came booming into this cove from the Bay of Traitors, often with bewildering force, and a day or two a month as gently as the waves at Waikiki. The river spread a broad mouth to drink the brine, and the white sand was over-run by the flowered vines that crept seaward to taste the salt.
"The village of Lengan Lengang consists of about a dozen houses, is situated in a nook of the hills, and surrounded by cocoanut-trees. We were accommodated in the principal house, and treated with every hospitality. The people of the hills are poor, though their land is fertile, and produces abundance of rice and Indian corn.
I was at the one called in the chart 'Saddle Hill, the smallest of them, I think: and seldom have I had such sensations of peace as I lay a whole burning day in a rising vale, deeply-shaded in palm and tropical ranknesses, watching thence the Speranza at anchor: for there was a little offing here at the shore whence the valley arose, and I could see one of its long peaks lined with cocoanut-trees, and all cloud burned out of the sky except the flimsiest lawn-figments, and the sea as absolutely calm as a lake roughened with breezes, yet making a considerable noise in its breaking on the shore, as I have noticed in these sorts of places: I do not know why.
Enough pearling being done for the day, Bostock attacked one of the heaviest laden cocoanut-trees, making a "sterrup," as he called it, by passing a short piece of rope round himself and the tree, tying it fast, and then half-sitting in it and pressing against the trunk with his legs, hitching the rope up foot by foot till he reached the leafy crown, where he screwed off a dozen fine nuts and threw them down upon the sand before descending.
In the dark silence, with no wind to rustle the breadfruit and cocoanut-trees, and only the brook faintly murmuring below, I heard a low babble of voices. No word was distinguishable, not even the language, yet curiously the sound had a rhythm that I knew. I have heard from a distance preaching in many languages.
It took us some little time before we could reach the place where we could dip the pot in and get the water pure. We filled it, and set off again on our way back. We had just reached the grove of cocoanut-trees. I happened to look up at the hill where I had seen Jack the morning after our arrival, when I saw against the sky the forms of well-nigh a dozen savages.
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