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But he would soon return again, and hiding his weapon under the projecting eaves of the house, and rolling his clumsy trinkets carefully in a piece of tappa, would resume his more pacific operations as quietly as if he had never interrupted them.
The islanders understand the art of embalming, and practice it with such success, that the bodies of their great chiefs are frequently preserved for many years in the very houses where they died. I saw three of these in my visit to the bay of Tior. One was enveloped in immense folds of tappa, with only the face exposed, and hung erect against the side of the dwelling.
He executed the order in the twinkling of an eye, and unrolling a piece of tappa, displayed to my astonished gaze the identical pumps which I thought had been destroyed long before. I immediately comprehended his desire, and very generously gave him the shoes, which had become quite mouldy, wondering for what earthly purpose he could want them.
Very soon he was doctoring natives on the sly for quarters and half dollars and bonito hooks and tappa, and quite a row of bottles and drug-store stuff began to accumulate along the ledges of the shed walls.
"I have often watched the whole process of making tappa, or native cloth, from the bark of the paper-mulberry; it is quite simple, and I have no doubt we can succeed in it; I have talked with Eiulo on the subject and find that he understands the process thoroughly." "But are there any paper-mulberries on the island!" inquired Morton. "I have not seen any," answered Arthur.
Thus an incessant din was kept up that might have startled Pandemonium. Precisely in the middle of the quadrangle were placed perpendicularly in the ground a hundred or more slender, fresh-cut poles, stripped of their bark, and decorated at the end with a floating pennon of white tappa, the whole being fenced about with a little picket of canes.
It is prepared by mixing with a vegetable juice the ashes of the 'armor', or candle-nut, always preserved for the purpose. Beside the savage, and spread out upon a piece of soiled tappa, were a great number of curious black-looking little implements of bone and wood, used in the various divisions of his art.
This garment, once worn as a festival dress, is now seldom met with; but Captain Bob had often shown us one which he kept as an heirloom. It was a cloak, or mantle, of yellow tappa, precisely similar to the "poncho" worn by the South-American Spaniards. The head being slipped through a slit in the middle, the robe hangs about the person in ample drapery.
It was swathed round with ragged bits of white tappa, and the upper part, which was intended to represent a human head, was embellished with a strip of scarlet cloth of European manufacture. It required little observation to discover that this strange object was revered as a god.
Hanging obliquely from his girdle by a loop of sinnate was a richly decorated pipe; the slender reed forming its stem was coloured with a red pigment, and round it, as well as the idol-bowl, fluttered little streamers of the thinnest tappa. But that which was most remarkable in the appearance of this splendid islander was the elaborate tattooing displayed on every noble limb.
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