United States or Sri Lanka ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We were what might be called a republic, having no king and being supposed to be ruled by the old men, who met from time to time in a wickerwork building that looked more like a giant clothes-basket than anything resembling a house. Yes, Raka-hanga was an independent country, and no flag floated over us but our own or would have if we had had one, which we hadn't.
If ever there was a scandal in Raka-hanga it was the sight of this six-foot-three of raving, roaring savage, rough-housing the place upside down and bellowing insults at the top of his lungs. But nothing was done to stop him till the liquor took its course, and then old David, he gathered the Parliament about him, and ran him into the jail with a one-two-three like a sack of oats.
But Peter wasn't gunning for any missionary, which even in Raka-hanga might have had a nasty comeback the natives being mild but not cowards, and beginning to buzz like hornets and reach for their shark-tooth spears. No, what Peter was inflamed against was the coral jail, which he set at most ferocious with crowbar and ax until it was nothing but a heap of rubbish.
But this is all by the way to give you an idea of what Raka-hanga was like, and make the rest of the yarn the easier to understand.
You would have to go far to see a prettier island than Raka-hanga, or nicer, friendlier, finer-looking people; and when I say they never watered their copra on us, nor worked any of those heartbreaking boycotts to bring prices down, you can realize how much out of the beaten track it was and how little they had yet learned of civilization.
I had got rooted in Raka-hanga, and so had Stanley Hicks, and though we both had ideas of getting away and often talked of it, we never did being like people half asleep in a feather bed, with life drifting on unnoticed, and the wind rustling in the palms, and one summer day so like another that you lost count of time altogether.
Raka-hanga is a dot of an island in the mid-Pacific, and so far from anywhere that it doesn't belong to a group as most islands do but is all by its lonesome in the heave and roll of the emptiest ocean in the world.
Word Of The Day