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When they found him, the next day, he was clean crazy—carried on all the time about somebody watering his copra. Poor John!” “Was it thought to be the island?” I asked. “Well, it was thought to be the island, or the trouble, or something,” he replied. “I never could hear but what it was a healthy place. Our last man, Vigours, never turned a hair.
As the palm bears nuts perennially, there were always coconut-laden proas making the beach. Thus, McClintock carried to Copeley's press about half a million pounds of copra. There was a very substantial profit in the transaction, for he paid the natives in commodities coloured cotton cloths, pipes and tobacco, guns and ammunition, household utensils, cutlery and glass gewgaws.
"Tell him about Fred Ohlson," said Mrs Davidson. The missionary fixed his fiery eyes on Dr Macphail. "Fred Ohlson was a Danish trader who had been in the islands a good many years. He was a pretty rich man as traders go and he wasn't very pleased when we came. You see, he'd had things very much his own way. He paid the natives what he liked for their copra, and he paid in goods and whiskey.
An occasional schooner from Sydney called at the "town" about ten miles away, where the viceroy's house was, and at the present time of speaking one of Godeffroi's Hamburg ships was at anchor there, taking in an accumulation of copra from her agent's store. But the natives all spoke of her with a shrug "No like Tashman. Tashman no good." Why, I could not ascertain.
"I sha'n't let him off with less than twenty tons of copra for my girls' school; and he'll have to apologize, too, and swear on a shark's head to behave for a year." "We can't all have such intrepid little wives," said Kirke, putting his arm fondly about her.
A fine show I made of it; and the third morning when I had lit my pipe and stood in the doorway and looked in, and turned and looked far up the mountain and saw the cocoa-nuts waving and posted up the tons of copra, and over the village green and saw the island dandies and reckoned up the yards of print they wanted for their kilts and dresses, I felt as if I was in the right place to make a fortune, and go home again and start a public-house.
The time of raising a tax is the harvest of the merchants; it is the time when copra will be made, and must be sold; and the intention of the German firm, first in the time of Steinberger, and again in April and May, 1888, with Brandeis, was to seize and handle the whole operation. Their chief rivals were the Messrs.
The white man who danced in Oomoa Valley; a wild-boar hunt in the hills; the feast of the triumphant hunters and a dance in honor of Grelet. Grelet had gone in a whale-boat to Oia, a dozen miles away, to collect copra, and I was left with an empty day to fill as I chose.
The sale of drink is in this group a measure of the jealousy of traders; one begins, the others are constrained to follow; and to him who has the most gin, and sells it the most recklessly, the lion's share of copra is assured. It is felt by all to be an extreme expedient, neither safe, decent, nor dignified. A trader on Tarawa, heated by an eager rivalry, brought many cases of gin.
As we rowed away from the melancholy little derelict I saw that near by a narrow gully gave access to the top of the cliff, and I resolved that I would avail myself of this path to visit the Island Queen again. My mind continued to dwell upon the unknown figure of the copra gatherer.
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