NAURU, THE RICHEST ISLAND IN THE SOUTH SEAS 



575 



plete the sea endeavors to tear them 

 loose. "White horses" is not a far- 

 fetched figure of speech for the crests 

 forever hurdling the deep-green waves. 

 Like wild stallions bitted and bridled, 

 they tear at the steel "bridles" of the 

 moorings and lash out with thrashing 

 heels at the buoys, while beneath the sur- 

 face the steel cables are gnawed by salt 

 water, and polyps load them with their 

 fairy palaces of living coral. 



When all the difficulties of mining, 

 crushing, and drying the phosphate have 

 been overcome and the loaded cars have 

 been run out upon the piers ready to 

 shoot their loads into surf-boats, there 

 may come a "westerly" — that is, the wind 

 may change and blow toward the shore. 

 Then the ships, which always have steam 

 up and watches kept, as if at sea, loose 

 their moorings and go out to sea, where 

 they drift about, waiting for the wind to 

 change. 



One ship made a record by drifting for 

 three months while waiting a chance to 

 take on cargo, coming up to the island 

 daily to signal. At length she ran out of 

 coal and a collier came up from Sydney 

 to supply her, but as it was impossible to 

 tranship the coal on account of the vio- 

 lence of the sea, the ship, with the at- 

 tendant collier, proceeded to a lagoon 

 in the Carolines, where she filled her 

 bunkers. 



LABOR RECRUITED FROM DISTANT ISLANDS 



The two classes of laborers, the work- 

 ers in the phosphate field and the loading 

 crews on the cars and boats, include few 

 natives of Nauru. The former, as we 

 have seen, are Chinese coolies, the latter 

 Kanakas recruited from other islands. A 

 Kanaka is a South Sea islander. The 

 word is a general term meaning man; but 

 no islander applies it to himself or to men 

 of his own island. He uses it as a term 

 of contempt. 



Every two or three years a ship is sent 

 among the Marshalls, Carolines, and Gil- 

 bert and Ellice groups to recruit laborers 

 and to return the Kanakas whose terms 

 have expired. 



The recruited laborer hires himself to 

 the "company" not on account of wages, 

 but as a chance to travel, to see the world. 

 He is assured of food and shelter and, 

 if he has a wife and family, is given mar- 



ried quarters. He looks upon the wage 

 as "velvet," to be spent' on such luxuries 

 as gay lava-lavas made in Manchester. 

 England; for tobacco, sugar, canned 

 salmon, jewsharps, and accordions. 



He takes life lightly, hilariously, and 

 gets much amusement out of his employ- 

 ment. Not for him the arduous labor of 

 the phosphate field — none will undertake 

 that but the plodding ''China boy" — but 

 the rush and roar of the steam and trolley 

 phosphate trains, the pitching and tossing 

 of the surf-boats under the end of the 

 cantilever, whose long steel arm reaches 

 beyond the edge of the reef, as the phos- 

 phate is shot down through a flexible can- 

 vas chute into huge baskets, amid clouds 

 of dust, usually reaching its objective, but 

 sometimes spilling into the sea to the 

 accompaniment of shouts and laughter. 



With singing, shouting, yelling, the 

 string of surf -boats is pulled by a motor 

 launch out to the ship, one man standing 

 in the stern of each to handle the long 

 steering oar, his brown body, clad only 

 in a lava-lava, glistening with coconut oil 

 and his head and shoulders powdered 

 with white dust. 



With more shouting and laughter the 

 baskets are caught up by the derricks, 

 swung on board and dumped into the 

 hold, sometimes missing and dropping 

 their contents into the sea amid renewed 

 merriment. If anything goes wrong 

 with the derricks and the men in the surf- 

 boats, rising and falling with the waves, 

 are threatened with danger from above, 

 they dive overboard to the safety of the 

 sea, like frogs on the edge of a pond 

 plunking into the water. 



Sometimes the wind changes so sud- 

 denly that the ship is obliged to put out 

 to sea in haste, and the surf-boats are 

 caught before they are able to reach 

 shelter in the small artificial boat harbor 

 and are either swamped or driven upon 

 the reef and thence hauled up on the 

 beach (see illustration, page 561). 



THE RELATION BETWEEN THE NATIVES 

 AND THE COCONUT TREES 



Nauru is about seven and a half miles 

 long and half as wide and is shaped like 

 an oyster. It is bordered by the reef, 

 which is bare at low tide, and inside of 

 which is a beach of white coral sand. 

 The beach above tide level is covered 



