WHEN we left the palace we were still but seafarers ashore;and within the hour we had installed our goods in one of the six foreign houses of Butaritari,namely,that usually occupied by Maka,the Hawaiian missionary.Two San Francisco firms are here established,Messrs.Crawford and Messrs.Wightman Brothers;the first hard by the palace of the mid town,the second at the north entry;each with a store and bar-room.Our house was in the Wightman compound,betwixt the store and bar,within a fenced enclosure.Across the road a few native houses nestled in the margin of the bush,and the green wall of palms rose solid,shutting out the breeze.A little sandy cove of the lagoon ran in behind,sheltered by a verandah pier,the labour of queens'hands.
Here,when the tide was high,sailed boats lay to be loaded;when the tide was low,the boats took ground some half a mile away,and an endless series of natives descended the pier stair,tailed across the sand in strings and clusters,waded to the waist with the bags of copra,and loitered backward to renew their charge.
The mystery of the copra trade tormented me,as I sat and watched the profits drip on the stair and the sands.
In front,from shortly after four in the morning until nine at night,the folk of the town streamed by us intermittingly along the road:families going up the island to make copra on their lands;women bound for the bush to gather flowers against the evening toilet;and,twice a day,the toddy-cutters,each with his knife and shell.In the first grey of the morning,and again late in the afternoon,these would straggle past about their tree-top business,strike off here and there into the bush,and vanish from the face of the earth.At about the same hour,if the tide be low in the lagoon,you are likely to be bound yourself across the island for a bath,and may enter close at their heels alleys of the palm wood.
Right in front,although the sun is not yet risen,the east is already lighted with preparatory fires,and the huge accumulations of the trade-wind cloud glow with and heliograph the coming day.
The breeze is in your face;overhead in the tops of the palms,its playthings,it maintains a lively bustle;look where you will,above or below,there is no human presence,only the earth and shaken forest.And right overhead the song of an invisible singer breaks from the thick leaves;from farther on a second tree-top answers;and beyond again,in the bosom of the woods,a still more distant minstrel perches and sways and sings.So,all round the isle,the toddy-cutters sit on high,and are rocked by the trade,and have a view far to seaward,where they keep watch for sails,and like huge birds utter their songs in the morning.They sing with a certain lustiness and Bacchic glee;the volume of sound and the articulate melody fall unexpected from the tree-top,whence we anticipate the chattering of fowls.And yet in a sense these songs also are but chatter;the words are ancient,obsolete,and sacred;few comprehend them,perhaps no one perfectly;but it was understood the cutters 'prayed to have good toddy,and sang of their old wars.'The prayer is at least answered;and when the foaming shell is brought to your door,you have a beverage well 'worthy of a grace.'All forenoon you may return and taste;it only sparkles,and sharpens,and grows to be a new drink,not less delicious;but with the progress of the day the fermentation quickens and grows acid;in twelve hours it will be yeast for bread,in two days more a devilish intoxicant,the counsellor of crime.
The men are of a marked Arabian cast of features,often bearded and mustached,often gaily dressed,some with bracelets and anklets,all stalking hidalgo-like,and accepting salutations with a haughty lip.The hair (with the dandies of either sex)is worn turban-wise in a frizzled bush;and like the daggers of the Japanese a pointed stick (used for a comb)is thrust gallantly among the curls.The women from this bush of hair look forth enticingly:the race cannot be compared with the Tahitian for female beauty;I doubt even if the average be high;but some of the prettiest girls,and one of the handsomest women I ever saw,were Gilbertines.
Butaritari,being the commercial centre of the group,is Europeanised;the coloured sacque or the white shift are common wear,the latter for the evening;the trade hat,loaded with flowers,fruit,and ribbons,is unfortunately not unknown;and the characteristic female dress of the Gilberts no longer universal.
The RIDI is its name:a cutty petticoat or fringe of the smoked fibre of cocoa-nut leaf,not unlike tarry string:the lower edge not reaching the mid-thigh,the upper adjusted so low upon the haunches that it seems to cling by accident.A sneeze,you think,and the lady must surely be left destitute.'The perilous,hairbreadth ridi'was our word for it;and in the conflict that rages over women's dress it has the misfortune to please neither side,the prudish condemning it as insufficient,the more frivolous finding it unlovely in itself.Yet if a pretty Gilbertine would look her best,that must be her costume.In that and naked otherwise,she moves with an incomparable liberty and grace and life,that marks the poetry of Micronesia.Bundle her in a gown,the charm is fled,and she wriggles like an Englishwoman.
