state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs[2] could
scarce have found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the
stream; made my way down that stony track to the garden, where the smoke
was still hanging and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, and so
home. Here, fondly supposing my long day was over, I rubbed down;
exquisite agony; water spreads the poison of these weeds; I got it all
over my hands, on my chest, in my eyes, and presently, while eating an
orange, _a la_ Rarotonga, burned my lip and eye with orange juice. Now
all day, our three small pigs had been adrift, to the mortal peril of
our corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and as I stood smarting on the back
verandah, behold the three piglings issuing from the wood just opposite.
Instantly I got together as many boys as I could--three, and got the
pigs penned against the rampart of the sty, till the others joined;
whereupon we formed a cordon, closed, captured the deserters, and
dropped them, squeaking amain, into their strengthened barracks where,
please God, they may now stay!

Perhaps you may suppose the day now over; you are not the head of a
plantation, my juvenile friend. Politics succeeded: Henry got adrift in
his English, Bene was too cowardly to tell me what he was after: result,
I have lost seven good labourers, and had to sit down and write to you
to keep my temper. Let me sketch my lads.--Henry--Henry has gone down to
town or I could not be writing to you--this were the hour of his English
lesson else, when he learns what he calls "long explessions" or "your
chief's language" for the matter of an hour and a half--Henry is a
chiefling from Savaii; I once loathed, I now like and--pending fresh
discoveries--have a kind of respect for Henry. He does good work for us;
goes among the labourers, bossing and watching; helps Fanny; is civil,
kindly, thoughtful; _O si sic semper!_ But will he be "his sometime self
throughout the year"? Anyway, he has deserved of us, and he must
disappoint me sharply ere I give him up.--Bene--or Peni--Ben, in plain
English--is supposed to be my ganger; the Lord love him! God made a
truckling coward, there is his full history. He cannot tell me what he
wants; he dares not tell me what is wrong; he dares not transmit my
orders or translate my censures. And with all this, honest, sober,
industrious, miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his own
unmanliness.--Paul--a German--cook and steward--a glutton of work--a
splendid f