VISITORS FROM THE SOUTH SEAS.
"MISS Lucy, you're as quiet as a mouse. Not in any mischief?" said Mrs.
Bunker, looking into the museum; "why, what are you doing there?"
"I'm looking at the great big globe, that Uncle Joe said I might touch,"
said Lucy: "here are all the names just like my lesson book at home;
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America."
"Why, bless the child! where else should they be? There be all the
oceans and seas besides that I've crossed over, many's the time, with
poor Ben Bunker, who was last seen off Cape Hatteras."
"What, all these great green places, with Atlantic and Pacific on them;
you don't really mean that you've sailed over them! I should like to
make a midge do it in a husk of hemp-seed! How could you, Mother Bunch?
You are not small enough."
"Ho! ho!" said the housekeeper, laughing; "does the child think I sailed
on that very globe there?"
"I know one learns names," said Lucy; "but is it real?"
"Real! Why, Missie, don't you see it's a sort of a picture? There's your
photograph now, it's not as big as you, but it shows you; and so a
chart, or a map, or a globe, is just a picture of the shapes of the
coast-line of the land and the sea, and the rivers in them, and
mountains, and the like. Look you here:" and she made Lucy stand on a
chair and look at a map of her own town that was hanging against the
wall, showing her all the chief buildings, the churches, streets, the
town hall, and market cross, and at last helping her to find her own
Papa's house.
When Lucy had traced all the corners she had to turn in going from home
to Uncle Joe's, and had even found little frizzles for the five
lime-trees before the Vicarage, she understood that the map was a small
picture of the situation of the buildings in the town, and thought she
could find her way to some new place, suppose she studied it well.
Then Mrs. Bunker showed her a big map of the whole country, and there
Lucy found the river, and the roads, and the names of the villages near,
as she had seen or heard of them; and she began to understand that a map
or globe really brought distant places into an exceedingly small
picture, and that where she saw a name and a spot she was to think of
houses and churches; that a branching black line was a flowing river
full of water; a curve in, a pretty bay shut in with rocks and hills; a
point jutting out, generally a steep rock with a lighthouse on it.
"And all these places are countries, Bunchey, are they, with fields and
houses like ours?"
"Houses, ay, and fields, but not always so very like ours, Miss Lucy."
"And are there little children, boys and girls, in them all?"
"To be sure there are, else how would the world go on? Why, I've seen
'em by swarms, white or brown or black, running down to the shore, as
sure as the vessel cast anchor; and whatever colour they were, you might
be sure of two things, Miss Lucy, that they were all alike in."
"Oh, what, Mrs. Bunker?"
"Why, in plenty of noise for one, and the other for wanting all they
could get to eat. But they were little darlings, some of them, if I only
could have got at them to make them a bit nicer. Some of them looked for
all the world like the little bronze images Master has got in the
museum, brought from Italy, and hadn't a rag more clothing neither. They
were in India. Dear, dear, to see them tumble about in the surf!"
"O, what fun! what fun! I wish I could see them. Suppose I could."
"You would be right glad, Missie, I can tell you, if you had been three
or four months aboard with nothing but dry biscuits and salt junk, and
may be a tin of preserved vegetables just to keep it wholesome, to see
the black fellows come grinning alongside with their boats and canoes
all full of oranges and limes and shaddocks and cocoa-nuts. Doesn't
one's mouth fairly water for them?"
"Do please sit down, there's a good Mother Bunch, and tell me all about
them? Come, suppose you do."
"Suppose I did, Miss Lucy, and where would your poor uncle's preserved
ginger be, that no one knows from real West Indian?"
[Illustration: "Do please sit down, there's a good Mother Bunch, and
tell me all about them."
_Page 18._]
"Oh, let me come into your room, and you can tell me all the time you
are doing the ginger."
"It is very hot there, Missie."
"That will be more like some of the places. I'll suppose I'm there!
Look, Mrs. Bunker, here's a whole green sea, all over the tiniest little
dots. There can't be people in them."
"Dots? You'd hardly see all over one of those dots if you were in one.
That's the South Sea Miss Lucy, and those are the loveliest isles,
except, may be, the West Indies, that ever I saw."
"Tell me about them, please," entreated Lucy "Here's one; its name
is--is Ysabel--such a little wee one."
[Illustration: Lucy had a great sneezing fit, and when she looked again
into the smoke, what did she see but two little black figures.
_Page 22._]
"I can't tell you much of those South Sea Isles, Missie, being that I
only made one voyage among them, when Bunker chartered the _Penguin_ for
the sandal-wood trade; and we did not touch at many, being that the
natives were fierce and savage, and made nothing of coming down with
arrows and spears at a boat's crew. So we only went to such islands as
the missionaries had been at, and got the people to be more civil and
conformable."
"Tell me all about it," said Lucy, following the old woman hither and
thither as she bustled about, talking all the time, and stirring her pan
of ginger over the hot plate.
How it happened, it is not easy to say; the room was very warm, and
Mother Bunch went on talking as she stirred, and a steam rose up, and by
and by it seemed to Lucy that she had a great sneezing fit, and when she
looked again into the smoke, what did she see but two little black
figures, faces, heads, and feet all black, but with an odd sort of white
garment round their waists, and some fine red and green feathers
sticking out of their woolly heads.
"Mrs. Bunker, Mrs. Bunker," she cried, "what's this? who are these ugly
figures?"
[Illustration: "I am so glad to see you. Hush, Don! don't bark so!"
_Page 27._]
"Ugly!" said the foremost; and though it must have been some strange
language, it sounded like English to Lucy. "Is that the way little
white girl speaks to boy and girl that have come all the way from Ysabel
to see her?"
"Oh, indeed! little Ysabel boy, I beg your pardon. I didn't know you
were real, nor that you could understand me! I am so glad to see you.
Hush, Don! don't bark so!"
"Pig, pig, I never heard a pig squeak like that," said the black
stranger.
"Pig! It is a little dog. Have you no dogs in your country?"
"Pigs go on four legs. That must be pig."
"What, you have nothing that goes on four legs but a pig! What do you
eat, then, besides pig?"
"Yams, cocoa-nut, fish--oh, so good, and put pig into hole among hot
stones, make a fire over, bake so nice!"
"You shall have some of my tea and see if that is as nice," said Lucy.
"What a funny dress you have; what is it made of?"
"Tapa cloth," said the little girl. "We get the bark off the tree, and
then we go hammer, hammer, thump, thump, till all the hard thick stuff
comes off;" and Lucy, looking near, saw that the substance was really
all a lacework of fibre, about as close as the net of Nurse's caps.
"Is that all your clothes?" she asked.
"Yes, till I am a warrior," said the boy; "then they will tattoo my
forehead, and arms, and breast, and legs."
"Tattoo! what's that?"
"Make little holes, and lines all over the skin with a sharp shell, and
rub in juice that turns it all to blue and purple lines."
"But doesn't it hurt dreadfully?" asked Lucy.
"Hurt! to be sure it does, but that will show that I am brave. When
Father comes home from the war, he paints himself white."
"White!"
"With lime made by burning coral, and he jumps and dances and shouts: I
shall go to the war one of these days."
"Oh no, don't!" said Lucy, "it is horrid."
The boy laughed, but the little girl whispered, "Good white men say so.
Some day Lavo will go and learn, and leave off fighting."
Lavo shook his head. "No, not yet; I will be brave chief and warrior
first,--bring home many heads of enemies."
"I--I think it nice to be quiet," said Lucy; "and--and--won't you have
some dinner?"
"Have you baked a pig?" asked Lavo.
"I think this is mutton," said Lucy, when the dish came up,--"it is
sheep's flesh."
Lavo and his sister had no notion what sheep were. They wanted to sit
cross-legged on the floor, but Lucy made each of them sit in a chair
properly; but then they shocked her by picking up the mutton-chops and
stuffing them into their mouths with their fingers.
"Look here!" and she showed the knives and forks.
"Oh!" cried Lavo, "what good spikes to catch fish with! and
knife--knife--I'll kill foes! much better than shell knife."
[Illustration: "I can eat much better without," said Lavo.
_Page 30._]
"And I'll dig yams," said the sister.
"Oh no!" entreated Lucy, "we have spades to dig with, soldiers have
swords to fight with, these are to eat with."
"I can eat much better without," said Lavo, but to please Lucy his
sister did try; slashing hard away with her knife, and digging her fork
straight into a bit of meat. Then she very nearly ran it into her eye,
and Lucy, who knew it was not good manners to laugh, was very near
choking herself. And at last, saying the knife and fork were "great
good--great good; but none for eating," they stuck them through the
great tortoiseshell rings they had in their ears and noses. Lucy was
distressed about Uncle Joseph's knives and forks, which she knew she
ought not to give away; but while she was looking about for Mrs. Bunker
to interfere, Don seemed to think it his business, and began to growl
and fly at the little black legs.
[Illustration: Lavo had climbed up the side of the door, and was sitting
astride on the top of it.
_Page 35._]
"A tree, a tree!" cried the Ysabelites, "where's a tree?" and while
they spoke, Lavo had climbed up the side of the door, and was sitting
astride on the top of it, grinning down at the dog, and his sister had
her feet on the lock, going up after him.
"Tree houses," they cried; "there we are safe from our enemies."
And Lucy found rising before her, instead of her own nursery, a huge
tree, on the top of a mound.[1] Basket-work had been woven between the
branches to make floors, and on these were huts of bamboo cane; there
were ladders hanging down made of strong creepers twisted together, and
above and around the cries of cockatoos and parrots and the chirp of
grasshoppers rang in her ears. She laid hold of the ladder of creeping
plants and began to climb, but soon her head swam, she grew giddy, and
called out to Lavo to help her. Then suddenly she found herself curled
up in Mrs. Bunker's big beehive chair, and she wondered whether she had
been asleep.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] See the _Net_, June 1, 1867.