CHAPTER XIII. The Household of Lam Kai Oo; Copra Making; Marvels of the

The household of Lam Kai Oo; copra making; marvels of the cocoanut-groves; the sagacity of pigs; and a crab that knows the laws of gravitation.

Next morning, after bidding farewell to my hosts, I set out down the mountain in the early freshness of a sunny, rain-washed morning. I followed a trail new to me, a path steep as a stairway, walled in by the water-jeweled jungle pressing so close upon me that at times I saw the sky only through the interlacing fronds of the tree-ferns above my head.

I had gone perhaps a mile without seeing any sign of human habitation, hearing only the conversation of the birds and the multitudinous murmuring of leaves, when a heavy shower began to fall. Pressing on, hampered by my clinging garments and slipping in the path that had instantly become a miniature torrent, I came upon a little clearing in which stood a dirty, dark shanty, like a hovel in the outskirts of Canton, not raised on a paepae but squat in an acre of mud and the filth of years.

Two children, three or four years old, played naked in the muck, and Flower, of the red-gold hair, reputed the wickedest woman in the Marquesas, ironed her gowns on the floor of the porch. Raising her head, she called to me to come in.

This was the house of Lam Kai Oo, the adopted father of Flower. Seventy-one years old, Lam Kai Oo had made this his home since he left the employ of Captain Hart, the unfortunate American cotton planter, and here he had buried three native wives. His fourth, a woman of twenty years, sat in the shelter of a copra shed nursing a six-months' infant. Her breasts were dark blue, almost black, a characteristic of nursing mothers here.

Both the mother and Flower argued with me that I should make Many Daughters my wife during my stay in Atuona, and if not the leper lass, then another friend they had chosen for me. Flower herself had done me the honor of proposing a temporary alliance, but I had persuaded her that I was not worthy of her beauty and talents. Any plea that it was not according to my code, of even that it was un-Christian, provoked peals of laughter from all who heard it; sooth to say, the whites laughed loudest.

Beneath a thatch of palm-leaves Lam Kai Oo was drying cocoanuts. His withered yellow body straddled a kind of bench, to which was fixed a sharp-pointed stick of iron-wood. Seizing each nut in his claw-like hands, he pushed it against this point, turning and twisting it as he ripped off the thick and fibrous husk. Then he cracked each nut in half with a well-directed blow of a heavy knife. For the best copra-making, the half-nuts should be placed in the sun, concave side up. As the meats begin to dry, they shrink away from the shell and are readily removed, being then copra, the foundation of the many toilet preparations, soaps and creams, that are made from cocoa-oil.

As it rains much in the Marquesas, the drying is often done in ovens, though sun-dried copra commands a higher price. Lam Kai Oo was operating such an oven, a simple affair of stones cemented with mud, over which had been erected a shed of palm-trunks and thatch. The halved cocoanuts were placed in cups made of mud and laid on wooden racks above the oven. With the doors closed, a fire was built in the stone furnace and fed from the outside with cocoa-husks and brush. Such an oven does not dry the nuts uniformly. The smoke turns them dark, and oil made from them contains undesirable creosote. Hot-water pipes are the best source of heat, except the sun, but Lam Kai Oo was paying again for his poverty, as the poor man must do the world over.

Forty-four years earlier he had left California, after having given seven years of his life to building American railways. The smoke of the Civil War had hardly cleared away when Captain Hart had persuaded him, Ah Yu and other California Chinese to come to Hiva-oa, and put their labor into his cotton plantations. Cannibalism was common at that date. I asked the old man if he had witnessed it.

"My see plenty fella eatee," he replied. "Kanaka no likee Chineeman. Him speak bad meatee."

He told me how on one occasion the Lord had saved him from drowning. With a lay brother of the Catholic Mission, he had been en route to Vait-hua in a canoe with many natives. There was to be a church feast, and Lam Kai Oo was carrying six hundred Chile piastres to back his skill against the natives in gambling; Lam, of course, to operate the wheel of supposed chance.

The boat capsized in deep water. The lay brother could not swim, but was lifted to the keel of the upturned boat, while the others clung to its edges. He prayed for hours, while the others, lifting their faces above the storming waves, cried hearty amens to his supplications. Finally the waves washed them into shallow water. The brother gave earnest thanks for deliverance, but Lam thought that the same magic should give him back the six hundred pieces of silver that had gone into the sea.

"My savee plenty Lord helpee you," said he. "Allee samee, him hell to live when poor. Him Lord catchee Chile money, my givee fitty dolla churchee."

He sighed despairingly, and fed more cocoa-husks to his make-shift oven. The shower had passed, moving in a gray curtain down the valley, and picking my way through the mire of the yard, I followed it in the sunshine.

My way led now through the cocoanut-groves that day and night make the island murmurous with their rustling. They are good company, these lofty, graceful palms, and I had grown to feel a real affection for them, such as a man has for his dog. Like myself, they can not live and flourish long unless they see the ocean. Their habit has more tangible reason than mine; they are dependent on air and water for life. The greater the column of water that flows daily up their stems and evaporates from the leaves, the greater the growth and productivity.

Evaporation being in large measure dependent on free circulation of air, the best sites for cocoanut plantations are on the seashore, exposed to the winds. They love the sea and will grow with their boles dipped at high tide in the salt water.

These trunks, three feet in diameter at the base and tapering smoothly and perfectly to perhaps twelve inches at the top, are in reality no more than pipes for conveying the water to the thirsty fronds. Cut them open, and one finds a vast number of hollow reeds, held together by a resinous pitch and guarded by a bark both thick and exceedingly hard. There is no branch or leaf except at the very tip of the trunk, where a symmetrical and gigantic bouquet of leaves appears, having plumes a dozen feet long or more, that nod with every zephyr and in storms sway and lash the tree as if they were living things.

I used to wonder why these great leaves, the sport of the idlest breeze as well as the fiercest gale, were not torn from the tree, but when I learned to know the cocoanut palm as a dear friend I found that nature had provided for its survival on the wind-swept beaches with the same exquisite attention to individual need that is shown in the electric batteries and lights of certain fishes, or in the caprification of the fig. A very fine, but strong, matting, attached to the bark beneath the stalk, fastened half way around the tree and reaching three feet up the leaf, fixes it firmly to the trunk but gives it ample freedom to move. It is a natural brace, pliable and elastic.

There is scarcely a need of the islander not supplied by these amiable trees. Their wood makes the best spars, furnishes rafters and pillars for native houses, the knee- and head-rests of their beds, rollers for the big canoes or whale-boats, fences against wild pig, and fuel. The leaves make screens and roofs of dwellings, baskets, and coverings, and in the pagan temples of Tahiti were the rosaries or prayer-counters, while on their stiff stalks the candlenuts are strung to give light for feasts or for feasting. When the tree is young the network that holds the leaves is a beautiful silver, as fine as India paper and glossy; narrow strips of it are used as hair ornaments and contrast charmingly with the black and shining locks of the girls. When older, this matting has every appearance of coarse cotton cloth, and is used to wrap food, or is made into bags and even rough garments, specially for fishermen.

The white flowers are small and grow along a branching stalk, protected by a sheath, and just above the commencement of the leaf. From them is made the cocoanut-brandy that enables the native to forget his sorrows. Flowers and nuts in every stage of development are on the same tree, a year elapsing between the first blossom and the ripe nut. Long before it is ripe, but after full size has been attained, the nut contains a pint or even a quart of delicious juice, called milk, water, or wine, in different languages. It is clear as spring water, of a delicate acidity, yet sweet, and no idea of its taste can be formed from the half-rancid fluid in the ripe nuts sold in Europe or America. It must be drunk soon after being taken from the tree to know its full delights, and must have been gathered at the stage of growth called koie, when there is no pulp within the shell.

Not long after this time the pulp, white as snow, of the consistency and appearance of the white of a soft-boiled egg, forms in a thin layer about the walls of the nut. This is a delicious food, and from it are made many dishes, puddings, and cakes. It is no more like the shredded cocoanut of commerce than the peach plucked from the tree is like the tinned fruit.

The pulp hardens and thickens as time goes on, and finally is an inch in thickness. Occasionally the meat when hard and ripe is broiled and eaten. I like it fairly well served in this fashion.

If left on the tree, the nut will in time fall, and in due course there begins in it a marvelous process of germination. A sweet, whitish sponge forms in the interior, starting from the inner end of the seed enclosed in the kernel, opposite one of the three eyes in the smaller end of the nut. This sponge drinks up all the liquid, and, filling the inside, melts the hard meat, absorbs it, and turns it into a cellular substance, while a white bud, hard and powerful, pushes its way through one of the eyes of the shell, bores through several inches of husk, and reaches the air and light.

This bud now unfolds green leaves, and at the same period two other buds, beginning at the same point, find their way to the two other eyes and pierce them, turning down instead of up, and forcing their way through the former husk outside the shell, enter the ground. Though no knife could cut the shell, the life within bursts it open, and husk and shell decay and fertilize the soil beside the new roots, which, within five or six years, have raised a tree eight or nine feet high, itself bearing nuts to reproduce their kind again.

All about me on the fertile soil, among decaying leaves and luxuriant vines, I saw these nuts, carrying on their mysterious and powerful life in the unheeded forest depths. Here and there a half-domestic pig was harrying one with thrusting snout. These pigs, which we think stupid, know well that the sun will the sooner cause a sprouting nut to break open, and they roll the fallen nut into the sunlight to hasten their stomachs' gratification, though with sufficient labor they can get to the meat with their teeth.

There is a crab here, too, that could teach even the wisest, sun-employing pig some tricks in economics. He is the last word in adaptation to environment, with an uncanny knowledge that makes the uninformed look askance at the tale-teller. These crabs climb cocoanut-trees to procure their favorite food. They dote on cocoanuts, the ripe, full-meated sort. They are able to enjoy them by various endeavors demanding strength, cleverness, an apparent understanding of the effect of striking an object against a harder one, and of the velocity caused by gravity. Nuts that resist their attempts to open them, they carry to great heights, to drop them and thus break their shells.

These crabs are called by the scientists Birgos latro, by the Marquesans tupa, by the Paumotans kaveu, and by the Tahitians, ua vahi haari. It was a never-failing entertainment on my walks in the Paumotas to observe these great creatures, light-brown or reddish in color, more than two feet in length, stalking about with their bodies a foot from the ground, supported by two pairs of central legs. They can exist at least twenty-four hours without visiting the water, of which they carry a supply in reservoirs on both sides of the cephalothorax, keeping their gills moist.

They live in large deep burrows in the cocoanut-groves, which they fill with husks, so that the natives often rob them to procure a quick supply of fuel. These dens are contrived for speedy entry when pursued. Terrifying as they appear when surprised on land, they scuttle for safety either to a hole or to the sea, with an agility astounding in a creature so awkward in appearance. Though they may be seen about at all hours of the day, they make forays upon the cocoanuts only at night.

Darwin first saw these creatures in the Indian Ocean, and said that they seek the sea every night to moisten their branchiae. The young are hatched and live for some time on the sea-coast, venturing far from water only as they grow older. Darwin said that their feat in entering the cocoanut "is as curious a case of instinct as was ever heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature, as a crab and a cocoanut-tree."

When darkness descends and all is quiet, the robber crab ascends the tree by gripping the bark with his claws. The rays of my electric flash-light have often caught him high over my head against the gray palm. Height does not daunt him. He will go up till he reaches the nuts, if it be a hundred feet. With his powerful nippers he severs the stem, choosing always a nut that is big and ripe. Descending the palm, he tears off the fibrous husk, which, at first thought, it would seem impossible for him to do. He tears it fiber by fiber, and always from that end under which the three eye-holes are situated. With these exposed, he begins hammering on one of them until he has enlarged the opening so that he can insert one of the sharp points of his claw into it. By turning his claw backward and forward he scoops out the meat and regales himself luxuriously.

This is his simplest method, along the line of least resistance, but let the nut be refractory, and he seizes it by the point of a claw and beats it against a rock until he smashes it. This plan failing, he will carry the stubborn nut to the top of the tree again and hurl it to the earth to crack it. And if at first he does not succeed, he will make other trips aloft with the husked nut, dropping it again and again until at last it is shattered and lies open to his claws.

It is said that if a drop of oil be placed on the long and delicate antennae of these crabs they die almost instantly. We have a somewhat similar rumor with respect to salt and a bird's tail. Seldom does a robber crab linger to be oiled, and so other means of destroying him, or, at least, of guarding against his depredations, are sought. With the rat, who bites the flower and gnaws the young nuts, this crab is the principal enemy of the planter. The tree owner who can afford it, nails sheets of tin or zinc around the tree a dozen feet from the earth. Neither rat nor crab can pass this slippery band, which gives no claw-hold. Thousands of trees are thus protected, but usually these are in possession of white men, for tin is costly and the native is poor.

The ingenious native, however, employs another means of saving the fruit of his groves. He climbs the palm-trunk in the daytime, and forty feet above the ground encircles it with dirt and leaves. On his mat for the night's slumber, he smiles to think of the revenge he shall have. For the crab ascends and passes the puny barrier to select and fell his nuts, but when in his backward way he descends, he forgets the curious bunker he went over and, striking it again, thinks he has reached the ground. He lets go, and smashes on the rocks his crafty foe has piled below.