the palms, and one summer day so
like another that you lost count of time altogether.

You would have to go far to see a prettier island than Raka-hanga, or
nicer, friendlier, finer-looking people; and when I say they never
watered their copra on us, nor worked any of those heartbreaking
boycotts to bring prices down, you can realize how much out of the
beaten track it was and how little they had yet learned of civilization.
They were too simple and easy-going for their own good and that's a
fact, for they allowed David, the Tongan pastor, to walk all over them,
which he did right royal with his great, fat, naked feet; and when
anything didn't please this here David nor the deacons, they stuck him
or her in the coral jail and locked the door on him--or her--as the case
might be and usually was.

We were what might be called a republic, having no king and being
supposed to be ruled by the old men, who met from time to time in a
wickerwork building that looked more like a giant clothes-basket than
anything resembling a house. Yes, Raka-hanga was an independent country,
and no flag floated over us but our own--or would have if we had had
one, which we hadn't. Of course Stanley and I knew it could not last
like this forever, and even the natives weren't unprepared for our being
annexed some day by a passing man-of-war--though all hoped it would go
on as it was, with nobody interfering with us nor pasting proclamations
on trees. It is all very fine to see "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN" _or_
"VIVE LA REPUBLIQUE" at the bottom of a proclamation, but
Stanley and I knew it meant taxes and licenses and penal servitude if
you did this or failed to do that, and all those other blessings that
are served out to a Pacific island when one of the great powers suddenly
discovers it on the map.

Our republic was more in name than anything else, for old David, the
missionary, ruled the island with a rod of iron, and was so crotchety
and tyrannical that no Kanaka could call his soul his own. Every night
at nine he stood out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and
then woe betide any one who didn't go to bed instanter and shut up, no
matter if it were in the full of the moon and they in the middle of a
game of cards or yarning sociable on an upturned boat.

One had to get up just as military and autocratic--and as for dancing,
why the word itself could hardly be said, let alone the actual thing,
which meant the jail every time and a dose