FullReads

At last they arrived, boots and all, a straggling, hobbling party of seven, with cartridge belts and rifles. Little Daisy was formally put in their charge; solemn pledges were given and accepted; a keg of beef, to be subsequently presented, was hedged about with innumerable restrictions. That keg–like liberty–was to be at the price of eternal vigilance. And then, when everything had been said, and explained, and threatened, the whaleboat hoisted her anchor–a coral stone–and set a straight course for Tarawa.

It was a long day–a very long day–quite the longest day in Daisy’s tiny life. She successively exhausted the magic lantern, the dolly, and the chair. She went out and prattled with the army where they sprawled under the lee of the kitchen, smoking endless pandanus cigarettes. She helped Nantok prepare lunch–a bowl of chocolate made with condensed milk, and hot buttered toast. After lunch she had a nap with Nantok on the mats, and after that again an exciting talk about the great massacre on Tapatuea, where all Nantok’s people had been killed during that Kanaka Saint Bartholomew’s. Then out to the army again, and checkers, which the army played amazingly well, beating her so often that even this pastime palled. Then—-

Oh, what a sigh!

The sleek little seal was aweary, aweary. The house was so empty, so still, and there was such a void in that aching baby heart! She went into papa’s room and cried on his bed. He would be drowned in the strait; savage old Karaitch would shoot him with a gun; he would be blown out to sea like Mr. Pettibone the beach-comber. The hot tears scalded her cheeks. She had always liked Mr. Pettibone. Papa called him a proff–proff–proff something, but he had always been so jolly, and his red face and funny little blue eyes rose before her out of the mist. She cried over the lost Pettibone; over Tansy the cat, that had died from eating a lizard; over Nosey, her pet chicken, that Nantok had killed by mistake one night for supper; cried over papa and mamma, far away in the whaler–totaled up all the little sadnesses of her little life, meting out tears to every one. And then, feeling greatly refreshed, she went out on the front porch, and wondered what she should do next.

Down the shore, about a mile away, there were others who found time less heavy on their hands. At the Land We Live In, a one-roomed saloon which catered for a permanent white population of thirteen, and a transient one that varied from a cutter to a full-rigged ship–at the Land We Live In Christmas was being celebrated in a rousing fashion. To begin with, there were the mutineers of the Lord Dundonald, twenty-two strong, with plenty of money still to spend. Their revolt against authority had not been without some redeeming features, and an unbiased critic would have found it hard to blame them. After twenty-seven days and nights at the pumps of a four-masted sieve, the Lords had struck in a body, and forced the captain to abandon the ship and set out in three boats for Apiang. Here they double-dyed their crime by compelling the wrathful master to pay them their wages to date, from six hundred and thirty-nine pounds he had taken with him from a vessel he had fondly hoped to pump to China. Captain Latimer, with the three mates, the carpenter, and one of the hands, had sailed away south in the longboat, vowing yardarms and a man-of-war, and when last seen was sinking over the horizon in the direction of the Fiji Islands.

Well, here they all were in the Land We Live In, together with Tom Holderson, Peter Extrum, Eddy Newnes, and Long Joe Kelly, all of Apiang; Papa Benson, of Tarawa; Jones and Peabody, of Big Muggin; and crazy old Jimmy Mathison, of nowhere in particular–unless it were the nearest gin bottle; and it was a rip-roaring Christmas, and no mistake, with bottled beer flowing like water, and songs and choruses and clog dances and hornpipes; and Papa Benson (in earrings and pink pajamas) a-blowing enough wind through his concertina to have sailed a ship. And there were girls, too, seven or eight of them, in bright trade-cotton Mother Hubbards–a bevy of black-eyed little heathen savages, who bore a hand with the trays, and added their saucy laughter to the general gayety, helping out Larry the barkeep as he drew unending corks or stopped to wipe the sweat off his forehead, saying, “Genelmen, the drinks is on Billy,” or Tommy, or Long Joe, or whoever it was that was treating.