Atoll of Hikuera after the cyclone
The wrecked County of Roxburgh
I was not arrayed very smartly, having left collar, cravat, and socks, as well as shirt and undershirt, aboard. Pongee coat and trousers, with flexible shoes, were in this tropic an ideal compromise with culture. Open the coat, and the breeze had access to one’s puris naturalibus, and, if one had to swim or wade, little clothing was wetted. The chief surveyed me, saw that I took no interest in the cargo, and drew his own conclusion.
“Ia ora na!” he said gently, and led me toward the village.
It was seven years earlier that the last great cyclone had devastated these islands. Takaroa was mute witness of its ruin. The houses were almost all mere shacks of corrugated iron—walls and roofs of hideous gray metal. A few wooden buildings, including two stores, were the exceptions. The people had neither courage nor money to rebuild comfortable abodes. Lumber must be brought from Tahiti and carpenters employed. No more unsuitable material than iron for a house in this climate could be chosen, except glass, but it was comparatively cheap, easily put together, and a novelty. It was as unharmonious a note among the palms as rag-time music in a Greek theater, and in the next cyclone each separate sheet would be a guillotine. Nothing more than a few feet above the ground withstands these hurricanes, which fell cocoanuts as fire eats prairie-grass.
We had not walked a hundred yards before a powerful half-caste stopped me with a soft “Bon jour!” A good-looking, clean-cut man of thirty years, the white blood in him showed most in his efficient manner and his excellent French.
“You are American,” he said in that tongue in the wildest voice.
“Mais oui.” I replied.