tening
forward with the hose; and, last and most curious spectacle of all, all
the men in their dust-coloured fatigue clothes, at a note of the bugle,
falling simultaneously flat on deck, and the ship proceeding with its
prostrate crew--_quasi_ to ram an enemy; our dinner at night in a wild
open anchorage, the ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and showing us
alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and then the wild broken cliffy
palm-crested shores of the island with the surf thundering and leaping
close aboard. We had the ward-room mess on deck, lit by pink wax tapers,
everybody, of course, in uniform but myself, and the first lieutenant
(who is a rheumaticky body) wrapped in a boat cloak. Gradually the
sunset faded out, the island disappeared from the eye, though it
remained menacingly present to the ear with the voice of the surf; and
then the captain turned on the searchlight and gave us the coast, the
beach, the trees, the native houses, and the cliffs by glimpses of
daylight, a kind of deliberate lightning. About which time, I suppose,
we must have come as far as the dessert, and were probably drinking our
first glass of port to Her Majesty. We stayed two days at the island,
and had, in addition, a very picturesque snapshot at the native life.
The three islands of Manu'a are independent, and are ruled over by a
little slip of a half-caste girl about twenty, who sits all day in a
pink gown, in a little white European house with about a quarter of an
acre of roses in front of it, looking at the palm-trees on the village
street, and listening to the surf. This, so far as I could discover, was
all she had to do. "This is a very dull place," she said. It appears she
could go to no other village for fear of raising the jealousy of her own
people in the capital. And as for going about "tafatafaoing," as we say
here, its cost was too enormous. A strong able-bodied native must walk
in front of her and blow the conch shell continuously from the moment
she leaves one house until the moment she enters another. Did you ever
blow the conch shell? I presume not; but the sweat literally hailed off
that man, and I expected every moment to see him burst a blood-vessel.
We were entertained to kava in the guest-house with some very original
features. The young men who run for the _kava_ have a right to
misconduct themselves _ad libitum_ on the way back; and though they were
told to restrain themselves on the occasion of our visit, t