"I wish you'd look them over," he said. "These copra bugs drive a man wild. They get in your eyes, in your liquor, in your mouth--Lord! What a life!"
The cabin was filled with unsacked copra to the level of the upper tier of bunks. One had to crawl in on hands and knees. The copra bugs were something of a nuisance, and the smell and heat oppressive. I had traveled on more comfortable vessels, with tennis courts on the boat decks and Roman swimming baths below--but they didn't touch at Rutiaro.
I went through his accounts, verifying long lists of items, such as:
1 dozen beacon lanterns at 480 frs. Frs. 480
12 sacks Lily-Dust flour at 300 frs. Frs. 3600
1 gross Night-King flash lamps at 3600 frs. Frs. 3600
The work of checking up finished, we went out for a breath of air. The atoll lay abeam and still far distant; a faint bluish haze lifted a bare eighth of an inch above the circle of the horizon. Behind us, rain fell in a straight wall of water from a single black cloud which cast a deep shadow over the path we had come. Elsewhere the sky was clear and the sea the incredible blue of the tropics. Tino broke a long silence.
"Look here," he said. "What is it that interests you in these islands? I've never known anyone to visit them for pleasure before. Is it the women, or what?"
Under pressure, I admitted that Nature seemed to have spent her best effort among the Paumotuans in fashioning the men.
"You're right," said Tino. "The women are healthy enough, of course, but they don't set your heart beating a hundred to the minute. They have fine hands and white teeth, and you won't find such black hair in all the world as you find in these atolls. But that's the size of it. You can't praise them any further for looks. Maybe you haven't noticed their ears, because they always cover them up with their hair; but they're large, and their feet and ankles--tough as sole leather and all scarred over with coral cuts. That is well enough for the men, but with the women it's different. Makes you lose your enthusiasm, don't it?"
I had seen a good many striking exceptions in our wanderings, but I agreed that, in the main, what he said was true.
"Well, if it isn't the women, what else is there to be interested in? Not the islands themselves? Lord! When you've seen one you've seen the lot. Living on one of them is like living aboard ship. Not room to stretch your legs. They're solid enough, and they don't sink; but in a hurricane I'd a heap rather take my chances out to sea with the _Winship_ than to be lashed to the stoutest coconut tree in the whole group. Now you take Rutiaro. It was washed over seventeen years ago and all but twenty of the people killed. They are back to seventy-five now, but wait till the next bad blow down that way. They'll drown like rats just as they did before.