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While the first lieutenant and master were surveying the bay in which the ship lay, and the coast in its immediate neighbourhood, we pulled round to the opposite side of the island. We had as yet seen no natives, but as cocoa-nut trees were visible on shore, we concluded that some parts of it were inhabited.
The island is low; the highest parts may not be more than 150 feet above the sea; it is of a coral formation, with sandstone conglomerate. Most of the plants are African, but clove-trees, mangoes, and cocoa-nut groves give a luxuriant South Sea Island look to the whole scenery.
After the battle in which she conquered, she ordered cocoa-nut leaflets to be tied round the trees, marking them out as hers, and defying the enemy or any one else to touch them. To this day a strip of cocoa-nut leaflets encircling a tree is a sign that it is claimed by some one for a special purpose, and that the nuts there are not to be indiscriminately plucked without permission.
Well, I had got to a place where there was an underwood of what they call wild cocoa-nut mighty pretty with its scarlet fruit when there came a sound of singing in the wind that I thought I had never heard the like of. It was all very fine to tell myself it was the branches; I knew better. It was all very fine to tell myself it was a bird; I knew never a bird that sang like that.
To supply the place of Johnny's jacket and trousers, which are completely worn out, Arthur has made, from two or three large strips of cocoa-nut cotton, a garment resembling the South American "poncho," being a loose wrapper, with a circular aperture through which the head of the wearer is to be thrust.
By this time Peterkin had thinned down his spear and tied an iron point very cleverly to the end of it; I had formed a sling, the lines of which were composed of thin strips of the cocoa-nut cloth, plaited; and Jack had made a stout bow, nearly five feet long, with two arrows, feathered with two or three large plumes which some bird had dropped.
Another ruffian seized Antoine by the throat. A weapon gleamed before his eyes; but in that moment a quick patter of feet sounded in the roadway, followed by two reports like the sudden breaking of a cocoa-nut.
It is a substitute for twine, and useful for many a purpose, and is now sold to the merchants at about a shilling per pound. Baskets and fans are made as of old of the cocoa-nut leaflet, floor mats and a finer kind of baskets from the pandanus leaf. Twenty or thirty pieces of the rib of the cocoa-nut leaflet, fastened close together with a thread of cinnet, form a comb.
The boards of the floor had been brought from New Zealand, the heavy posts on which the plates were laid were cut in Vanua Lava, and the thatch was of cocoa-nut leaves, the leaflets ingeniously bound together, native fashion, and quite waterproof; but a mat or piece of canvas had to be nailed within the bamboo walls to keep out the rain.
"All nonsense, my dear; I always do what is pleasantest, and it agrees with me perfectly. In winter, I do toast my toes; and you know I eat half-a-dozen peaches and plums at a time like a South Sea Islander, only I believe they feast on cocoa-nut and breadfruit; don't they, Conny? You are the scholar; you know you have your geography at your finger-ends yet."
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