“It is beautiful in your islands, is it not?” Vanquished Often said wistfully. “Tell us more of the marvels there! Are the girls of your valleys very lovely, and do they all sleep in golden beds?”
All daughters of chiefs slept in golden beds, I told her. Often they wore golden slippers on their feet. When they wished to go over the mountains they did not walk, or ride on donkeys, but went in seats covered with velvet, a kind of cloth more soft than the silk ribbon of her pink garter-armlet, and these seats were drawn at incredible speed by a snorting thing made of iron, not living, but stronger than a hundred donkeys.
“How do they make that cloth?” said Vanquished Often, eagerly. They did not make it, I explained. It was made for them by girls who were not daughters of chiefs, and therefore had no golden beds.
Her eyes clouded with bewilderment, but Exploding Eggs listened breathlessly, and demanded more tales. I told them of wireless telegraphy. This they believed as they believed the tales of magic told by old sorcerers, but they scoffed at my description of an elevator, perceiving that I was loosing the reins of my fancy and soaring to impossibilities.
“The girls in your island must always be happy,” said Vanquished Often, sighing. All daughters of chiefs were happy, I said. “What is the manner of their fishing?” asked Exploding Eggs.
In such conversation we proceeded, walking for miles through a fairyland in which we were the only living creatures, save for the small scurrying things that slipped across the trail, and the bright-colored birds that fluttered through the tree-tops.
At noon we paused for luncheon. Vanquished Often disappeared in the forest, to return shortly with her gathered-up tunic filled with mangos and guavas, four cocoanuts slung in a neatly plaited basket of leaves on her bare shoulders. Exploding Eggs, cutting two sticks of dry wood from the underbrush, whirled them upon each other with such speed and dexterity that soon a small fire, fed by shreds of cocoanut fiber, blazed on a rock, with plantains heaped about it to roast.
While we rested after the feast Vanquished Often, squatted by my side, made for my comfort a wide-brimmed hat of thick leaves pinned together with thorns, a shelter from the sun's rays that was grateful to my tender scalp. Resuming our way, we met upon the trail a handsome small wild donkey, fearful of our kind, yet longing for company.
“Pureekee!” said Exploding Eggs, meaning bourrique, the French for donkey. And Vanquished Often related that once hundreds of these beasts roamed through the jungle, descendants of a pair of asses escaped from a ship decades before, but that most of them had starved to death in dry periods, or been eaten by hungry natives.
Farther on we passed acres of the sensitive plant, called by the Marquesans teita hakaina, the Modest Herb. A wide glade in a curve of the mountains was filled with a sea of it, and my companions delighted in dashing through its curiously nervous leafage, that shuddered and folded its feathery sprays together at their touch. If shocked further it opened its leaflets as if to say, “What's the use? I'm shy, but I can't stay under cover forever.”