"That's all," said he. "I shall put on my gang to bring it down. Here's some of 'em; they're beginning to muster now."
To my further astonishment, his "gang," as he termed them, were all of the female "persuasion."
"You don't mean to say that these woman are going to lug all this water two or three miles?"
"Yes, certainly," said he. "The men are too lazy to do any such drudgery, and think women were born expressly for it, and not fit for much else. Besides, only women are allowed to enter the water-cave. Gentlemen are not admitted."
Each of these women brought some half a dozen cocoanut shells, slung with short strings, so as to be carried, two or three in each hand.
"Why don't you get the ship's buckets?" I asked.
"O, they don't want buckets," said Dan: "they wouldn't use 'em if they had 'em. You must let 'em work in their own way."
They did work their own way; and all day long, and day after day, for it took them several days to fill twenty casks. The battalion of women, in Indian file, could be seen on their winding way as they carried their burdens to the beach, inverted their cocoanut shells over the tunnel, and retraced their weary steps to the subterranean pool, while the men looked complacently on, and Dan, the contractor, lay drunk the best part of the time on fire-water of his own manufacture.
As a consequence of his carelessness, he was obliged to fill four or five casks the second time, as we found the water salt on taking it on board, and the captain refused to pay the tobacco until he had fulfilled his contract. It was evident the women had gone astray in their wanderings, and filled some of their shells at the ocean instead of at the inland lake.