I had almost forgotten Monee, the grinning old man who prepared our
meal. His head was a shining, bald globe. He had a round little
paunch, and legs like a cat. He was Po-Po's factotum - cook, butler,
and climber of the bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees; and, added to all
else, a mighty favourite with his mistress; with whom he would sit
smoking and gossiping by the hour.
Often you saw the indefatigable Monee working away at a great rate;
then dropping his employment all at once - never mind what - run off to
a little distance, and after rolling himself away in a corner and
taking a nap, jump up again, and fall to with fresh vigour.
From a certain something in the behaviour of Po-Po and his household,
I was led to believe that he was a pillar of the church; though, from
what I had seen in Tahiti, I could hardly reconcile such a
supposition with his frank, cordial, unembarrassed air. But I was
not wrong in my conjecture: Po-Po turned out to be a sort of elder,
or deacon; he was also accounted a man of wealth, and was nearly
related to a high chief.
Before retiring, the entire household gathered upon the floor; and in
their midst, he read aloud a chapter from a Tahitian Bible. Then
kneeling with the rest of us, he offered up a prayer. Upon its
conclusion, all separated without speaking. These devotions took
place regularly, every night and morning. Grace too was invariably
said, by this family, both before and after eating.
After becoming familiarized with the almost utter destitution of
anything like practical piety upon these islands, what I observed in.
our host's house astonished me much. But whatever others might have
been, Po-Po was, in truth, a Christian: the only one, Arfretee
excepted, whom I personally knew to be such, among all the natives of
Polynesia.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
RETIRING FOR THE NIGHT - THE DOCTOR GROWS DEVOUT
THEY put us to bed very pleasantly.
Lying across the foot of Po-Po's nuptial couch was a smaller one made
of Koar-wood; a thin, strong cord, twisted from the fibres of the
husk of the cocoa-nut, and woven into an exceedingly light sort of
network, forming its elastic body. Spread upon this was a single,
fine mat, with a roll of dried ferns for a pillow, and a strip of
white tappa for a sheet. This couch was mine. The doctor was provided
for in another corner.
Loo reposed alone on a little settee with a taper burning by her side;
the dandy, her brother, swinging overhead in a sailor's hammock The
two gazelles frisked upon a mat near by; and the indigent relations
borrowed a scant corner of the old butler's pallet, who snored away
by the open door.
