Now, we knew all this was nonsense. There was no fear of the Pleasant Islanders' boats coming up the lagoon to these little villages when there was richer prey nearer at hand, so we only laughed. Many of the young boys and girls were of great personal beauty, and, indeed, so were many of the young unmarried women, but their light skins were stained and disfigured by the application of turmeric. At one of these places our pretty tormentors played us a trick. While we were in a house and having kava prepared in the Micronesian fashion, by pounding the green root into a hollowed stone, the girls carried our canoe up bodily from the beach and hid it in a clump of breadfruit trees about two hundred yards away. When we bade goodbye to the elder women, who had given us the kava, and walked down t
