Old Samoan Days. 
205 
Grateful enough it is to rest after our labours 
and eat the cold pigeon and taro and bread¬ 
fruit, which the nimble fingers of Vaitupu 
spreads out on extemporised platters of coconut 
leaves. She is now at home with the doctor, 
and laughs gaily as she sees him endeavouring to 
open a young coconut. Her tiputa is thrown 
aside over one shoulder, revealing all the budding 
beauty of coming womanhood, and round her 
head she has already entwined a wreath of 
scarlet hibiscus flowers, gathered from a bush 
that flaunts its wealth of flowers and foliage 
near by. 
“ Father,” she says with a laugh to the giant 
Samoan, “ let us wait here till it is cool, and 
this clever gentleman from the American fighting 
ship will tell us tala about many things ; of 
the great guns that load in the ‘ belly ’; of the 
iron devil-fish (torpedoes) that swim under the 
sea, and go under the bottoms of ships and bite 
them, and then blow them up, so that all the 
men are drowned ; and ask him if he has ever 
killed any people ; and if he has a wife in 
America, and is she young and pretty; and 
could the American fighting ship sink the big 
German man-of-war that was at Apia last year, 
