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"Cookie," said I sternly, "you've been drinking too much cocoanut-milk and it has gone to your head. What you saw was just a plain ordinary pig." Cookie disputed this, citing the pale hue of the apparition as against the fact that all our island pigs were black. "Then there happens to be a blond pig among them that we haven't seen," I assured him.
A half ounce of rum, a pint of cocoanut-milk from a very young nut, the juice of half a lime just from the tree, two lumps of sugar, and I had an invigorating draught, long enough for a golf player after thirty-six holes, and delicate enough for a debutante after her first cotillion. The Paumotan boys and Pae looked on in horror, saying that I was spoiling good rum.
When baked, it is not very unlike bread. It is cooked by being cut into several pieces, which are baked in an oven in the ground. It is often eaten with orange-juice and cocoanut-milk. Some of the South-Sea islanders depend very much upon it for their food. The large seeds, when roasted, are said to taste like the best chestnuts.
Piahi, the native chestnuts shelled and cooked in cocoanut-milk, were an appetizer, followed by small fish, which we ate raw after soaking them in lime juice. There is no dish that the white man so soon learns to crave and so long remembers when departed.
"Here is a beautiful exercise," he told me, once, flapping his arms mightily against his sides; "I learned it from watching the roosters crow." Another time I remarked the loud, sucking intake with which he drank cocoanut-milk. He explained that he had noticed the cows drinking that way and concluded there must be something in it.
Kivi shouted then. The women hurried forward with the food, and we fell to with a will. Pig and popoi, shark sweetbreads, roasted breadfruit and sweet potatoes, fruits and cocoanut-milk leaped from the broad leaf platters to wide-open mouths. Hardly a word was spoken.
The stiff hand of the white which had garbed the wedding party in the ungraceful clothing of the European mode had failed to pose the natural attitude of the Tahitian toward good cheer. A pile of breadfruit-leaves were laid before each feaster's space in lieu of plates, and four half-cocoanut-shells, containing drinking water, cocoanut-milk, grated ripe cocoanut, and sea-water.
Crabs were broiling upon it, and the pieces of the feke were flung beside them and the smaller octopi. When they were cooked, a trough of popoi and one of feikai, or roasted breadfruit mixed with a cocoanut-milk sauce, were placed on the sand, and all squatted to dine.
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