Grelet and I found Père Olivier sweeping out the church, cheerful, humming a cradle-song of the French peasants. He was glad to see us, though my companion was avowedly a pagan. Dwelling alone here with his dying charges, the good priest could not but feel a common bond with any white man, whoever he might be.
The kiosk, to which he took us, proved to be Père Olivier's eating-place, dingy, tottering, and poverty-stricken, furnished with a few cracked and broken dishes and rusty knives and forks, the equipment of a miner or sheep-herder. Père Olivier apologized for the meager fare, but we did well enough, with soup and a tin of boiled beef, breadfruit, and feis. The soup was of a red vegetable, not appetizing, and I could not make out the native name for it, hue arahi, until Grelet cried, “Ah, j'ai trouvé le mot anglais! Ponkeen, ponkeen!” It was a red pumpkin.
Removing the pig cooked in the umu, or native oven
The Koina Kai or feast in Oomoa
“La soupe maigre de missionaire,” murmured the priest.
I led the talk to the work of the mission.