en the tide was high, sailed boats lay to be loaded; when the tide was
low, the boats took ground some half a mile away, and an endless series
of natives descended the pier stair, tailed across the sand in strings
and clusters, waded to the waist with the bags of copra, and loitered
backward to renew their charge. The mystery of the copra trade tormented
me, as I sat and watched the profits drip on the stair and the sands.

In front, from shortly after four in the morning until nine at night,
the folk of the town streamed by us intermittingly along the road:
families going up the island to make copra on their lands; women bound
for the bush to gather flowers against the evening toilet; and, twice a
day, the toddy-cutters, each with his knife and shell. In the first
grey of the morning, and again late in the afternoon, these would
straggle past about their tree-top business, strike off here and there
into the bush, and vanish from the face of the earth. At about the same
hour, if the tide be low in the lagoon, you are likely to be bound
yourself across the island for a bath, and may enter close at their
heels alleys of the palm wood. Right in front, although the sun is not
yet risen, the east is already lighted with preparatory fires, and the
huge accumulations of the trade-wind cloud glow with and heliograph the
coming day. The breeze is in your face; overhead in the tops of the
palms, its playthings, it maintains a lively bustle; look where you
will, above or below, there is no human presence, only the earth and
shaken forest. And right overhead the song of an invisible singer breaks
from the thick leaves; from farther on a second tree-top answers; and
beyond again, in the bosom of the woods, a still more distant minstrel
perches and sways and sings. So, all round the isle, the toddy-cutters
sit on high, and are rocked by the trade, and have a view far to
seaward, where they keep watch for sails and like huge birds utter their
songs in the morning. They sing with a certain lustiness and Bacchic
glee; the volume of sound and the articulate melody fall unexpected from
the tree-top, whence we anticipate the chattering of fowls. And yet in a
sense these songs also are but chatter; the words are ancient, obsolete,
and sacred; few comprehend them, perhaps no one perfectly; but it was
understood the cutters "prayed to have good toddy, and sang of their old
wars." The prayer is at least answered; and when the foaming shell is
b