soldier's kit, for a distance
of perhaps half a furlong, passes measure. Woman, being the less
childish animal, is less relaxed by servile conditions. Even in the
king's absence, even when they were alone, I have seen Apemama women
work with constancy. But the outside to be hoped for in a man is that he
may attack his task in little languid fits, and lounge between-whiles.
So I have seen a painter, with his pipe going, and a friend by the
studio fireside. You might suppose the race to lack civility, even
vitality, until you saw them in the dance. Night after night, and
sometimes day after day, they rolled out their choruses in the great
Speak House--solemn andantes and adagios, led by the clapped hand, and
delivered with an energy that shook the roof. The time was not so slow,
though it was slow for the islands; but I have chosen rather to indicate
the effect upon the hearer. Their music had a church-like character from
near at hand, and seemed to European ears more regular than the run of
island music. Twice I have heard a discord regularly solved. From
farther off, heard at Equator Town for instance, the measures rose and
fell and crepitated like the barking of hounds in a distant kennel.

The slaves are certainly not overworked--children of ten do more without
fatigue--and the Apemama labourers have holidays, when the singing
begins early in the afternoon. The diet is hard; copra and a sweetmeat
of pounded pandanus are the only dishes I observed outside the palace;
but there seems no defect in quantity, and the king shares with them his
turtles. Three came in a boat from Kuria during our stay; one was kept
for the palace, one sent to us, one presented to the village. It is the
habit of the islanders to cook the turtle in its carapace; we had been
promised the shells, and we asked a tapu on this foolish practice. The
face of Tembinok' darkened and he answered nothing. Hesitation in the
question of the well I could understand, for water is scarce on a low
island; that he should refuse to interfere upon a point of cookery was
more than I had dreamed of; and I gathered (rightly or wrongly) that he
was scrupulous of touching in the least degree the private life and
habits of his slaves. So that even here, in full despotism, public
opinion has weight; even here, in the midst of slavery, freedom has a
corner.

Orderly, sober, and innocent, life flows in the isle from day to day as
in a model plantation under a model plante