Little Lucys Wonderful Globe | Page 5

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'sb 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