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, Africa, and America."
"Why, bless the child! where else should they be? There are all them
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 an ant do it on a sunflower 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 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 at last helping her 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
maple trees before the Parsonage, 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 if 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, yes, and fields, but not always 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 them by swarms, white or brown or black, running down to the
shore as soon as the vessel cast anchor; and whatever color they
were, you might be sure of two things, Miss Lucy, in which they
were all alike."
"Oh, what, Mrs. Bunker?"
"Why, in making plenty of noise, and in 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 cleaner. Some of them
looked for all the world like the little bronze images your Uncle
has got in the museum, which he brought from Italy, and they hadn't
a rag more clothing on either. They were in India. Dear, dear, to
see them tumble about in the surf!"
"Oh, what fun! what fun! I wish I could see them."
"You would be right glad, Missie, I can tell you, if you had been
three or four months aboard a vessel 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 grape-fruit
and cocoanuts. 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, please do."
"Suppose I did, Miss Lucy, where would your poor uncle's preserved
ginger be, that no one knows from real West Indian ginger?"
"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; the tiniest little dots
all over it."
"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; it's
name is--is Isabel--such a little wee one."
"I can't tell you much of those South Sea Isles, Missie, as I made
only one voyage among them, when Bunker chartered the _Penguin_ for
the sandalwood trade; and we did not touch at many, for the natives
were fierce and savage, and thought 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 to, and had made the people more gentle
and civil."
"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 wooly heads.
"Mrs. Bunker, Mrs. Bunker!" she cried; "what's this? Who are these
ugly figures?"
"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
Isabel to see her?"
"Oh, indeed! little Isabel 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."
"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 tortoise shell 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.
"A tree, a tree!" cried the Isabelites, "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. 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.