low in the great tree-tops and behind the mountain, and full moon
over the lowlands and the sea, inaugurated a night of horrid cold. To
you effete denizens of the so-called temperate zone, it had seemed
nothing; neither of us could sleep; we were up seeking extra coverings,
I know not at what hour--it was as bright as day. The moon right over
Vaea--near due west, the birds strangely silent, and the wood of the
house tingling with cold; I believe it must have been 60 deg.! Consequence:
Fanny has a headache and is wretched, and I could do no work. (I am
trying all round for a place to hold my pen; you will hear why later on;
this to explain penmanship.) I wrote two pages, very bad, no movement,
no life or interest; then I wrote a business letter; then took to
tootling on the flageolet, till glory should call me farmering.

I took up at the fit time Lafaele and Mauga--Mauga, accent on the first,
is a mountain, I don't know what Mauga means--mind what I told you of
the value of g--to the garden, and set them digging, then turned my
attention to the path. I could not go into my bush path for two reasons:
1st, sore hands; 2nd, had on my trousers and good shoes. Lucky it was.
Right in the wild lime hedge which cuts athwart us just homeward of the
garden, I found a great bed of kuikui--sensitive plant--our deadliest
enemy. A fool brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture
and sentimentalise over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken
charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and
life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel;
clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought him,
I bettered some verses in my poem, _The Woodman_;[3] the only thought I
gave to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small
patch of it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a
hand-to-hand skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this
time, close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Mauga
were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, "Somebody he sing out."--"Somebody
he sing out? All right. I go." And I went and found they had been
whistling and "singing out" for long, but the fold of the hill and the
uncleared bush shuts in the garden so that no one heard, and I was late
for dinner, and Fanny's headache was cross; and when the meal was over,
we had to cut up a pineapple which was going bad, to make jelly of; and
the