By daylight we were abreast of the islet, and due north of us could just see the tops of the coco-nuts on Apaian Lagoon showing above the sea-line, ten miles distant, and then, to our annoyance, the wind died away, and there was every indication of there being a dead calm till the evening. However, it could not be helped, so we pulled in right up to the beach, and let the two women step ashore to get breakfast ready. Tepi, picking out the youngest and fattest of the pigs, knocked it on the head, and cutting the thongs of the others tumbled them over the side. They soon recovered themselves, and went off. Then followed a massacre of a dozen of the fowls, the liberation of the rest, and the throwing away of the greater portion of the heavy coconuts. The bundles of mats I threw ashore to Niâbon, as they would be useless to shield us from the rain which might fall during our stay on the island, and then we set to and washed down decks, made everything snug, and went ashore for breakfast, well satisfied with our work, and with the fact that the boat was six inches higher out of the Water.
The islet, though small, was unusually fertile for so low-lying a spot—it being in no part more than fifteen feet above high-water mark—for in addition to the inevitable coco-palms, which grew thickly from the water's edge, there were hundreds of fine trees, among them being some noble and imposing jack-fruits, whose broad, bright green branches were almost level with the crowns of the palm-trees, their roots embedded in a rich, soft, black soil, formed by the fallen leaves of hundreds of years, mixed with decayed coral detritus.
Niâbon had spread the mats in a shady spot, and we all made a simple but hearty breakfast of grilled fowls, biscuit, and young coco-nuts. Then we lit our pipes and cigarettes of the good, strong black tobacco, and watched a shoal of fish leaping and playing about the boat, which, with loose, pendant cable, lay floating on a sea as smooth and as shining as a polished mirror.
The island, so Niâbon told me, had not been inhabited for a great number of years, though it was occasionally visited by natives for the purpose of collecting the ripe coco-nuts, and turning them into oil, and sometimes the white traders, living on Apaian, would stop there when they were on their way to Tarawa and Maiana Lagoons. The name of the island, she said, was Te Mata Toto (“The Bloody Eye”). “Why such a name?” I asked. “I will tell you some other time,” she replied; “not now, because I do not want Tepi to hear me talking about the place. With Tematau it would not matter, for although he knows the story, he is not a Tarawa man, and has nothing of which he need be afraid.”
We sat talking together for some little time, and as I looked at Lucia I could not but wonder at the marvellous manner in which she was recovering her health and strength. Her pallor, once so very manifest, had disappeared, as well as her languid step, and at this moment she was merrily reproving Tepi for smoking a pipe so old and dirty and so short in the stem that it was burning his nose.
The big man grinned, and said it was a lucky pipe. For when it was white, new, and long, and he was smoking it for the first time, he, with two other men, was fishing from a canoe, it fell from his mouth into the sea, and before he could dive for it was swallowed by a kura (rock-cod).
“How know you?” she asked.
“Because my mother found it in the belly of one of those we caught, when she was cooking it,” he replied promptly.
Presently Niâbon, who knew exactly to the smallest detail where everything was stowed in the boat, told him to look in one of the stern lockers for the fishing tackle, where he would find a small hand casting net, with which he and Tematau could go catch some grey mullet, while she, Lucia, and myself, walked round the island.
Bringing my gun with me—for there were great numbers of small golden plover flying past us towards the sand patches now being revealed by the ebbing tide, we started off, Niâbon leading, and conducting us directly towards the centre of the islet, which was less than three-quarters of a mile from shore to shore, and was the northernmost of a chain of five or six, almost connected with each other at low water, and forming the northern horn of the lagoon. À short walk brought us to a small cleared space, enclosed by some heavy timber. The ground was devoid of any foliage with the exception of some straggling, thorny bushes, growing up between the layers of what seemed to be a solid bed of coral slabs cast up by the action of the sea during heavy storms long years before.