The oily nut has lately been imported from Brazil into England under the name of "copperah," (copra) and pressed after heating.

At last, maddened by the biting rays, I collected half a dozen copra bags, splintered a piece of kauri pine, and after rigging up one bag as an awning, I spread the others on the planks and fell asleep.

The wharf had appeared deserted, and I gave them a start by crawling from underneath the awning I had made from the copra bag.

And I recalled a night at "Tonga Pete's" place on the Rue de Rivoli at Papeete, when a sailor from a copra schooner in the bay, who had been marooned upon the island by Captain "Bully" Hayes, told a wild, weird story of unexplainable happenings that he had witnessed during the two days and two nights he had spent ashore.

Hallman had kept a store there then for more than ten years, and had a good part of the business of buying and shipping copra and selling supplies to the natives and a few whites.

Mixed now with the perfumes of the flowers was the odor of cocoanuts, coming from the piles of copra on the dock, a sweetish, oily smell, rich, powerful, and never in foreign lands to be inhaled without its bringing vividly before one scenes of the tropics.

Besides, he had only one absorbing vice other than business, and with merely wine and song to be found at the club, Hallman went there but seldom, and only to talk about pearl-shell, copra, and the profits of schooner voyages.

We had eight tons of copra in the hold, filling it up within a foot of the hatch.

The mate wanted to throw the copra overboard.

Well, we pulled through all right, because here I am, and the copra's on the dock.

"Did the prayers have anything to do with your pulling through and saving the copra?"

Curses upon Saint Michel, threats of damage suits for fright and delay, laughable stories of the mistakes of the volunteer crew of the Noa-Noa; discussions of the price of copra, mingled with the chants of the native feasters and ribald tales.

The ship was down to leave at three-thirty o'clock, but it was four when the last bag of copra was aboard.

The schooner was full of cargo, copra and pearl-shell and pearls, and was due to return to Papeete to discharge.

He was the only buyer in Tahiti of fresh nuts, as all others purchased them as copra, split and dried, for the oil.

He was long and meager, as dry as a cocoanut from the copra oven, as if all the juices of his body and soul had been expressed in his years of cooking the sea-centipedes for which he was celebrated.

<pb id='334.png' n='1959h2/A/1664' /> Copra Island.

<pb id='334.png' n='1959h2/A/1664' /> Copra Island.

He and I had some great evenings together, yarning and drinking copra.

" "What is copra like?"

you shall talk," I said to myself; and then aloud, "Tell me all about copra.

I have longed to know what copra is; how it grows, what it looks like, what it is for.

"Copra, the stuff that the traders in the South Seas deal in.

He spoke learnedly of atolls, copra, and missionaries, and, referring for a space to the Fijian belles, thought that their charms had been much overrated.

It is interesting to learn, however, that a punitive expedition was despatched by the British Government to avenge the insult, as a result of which Mr. Bamborough was awarded an indemnity of 1,000 bales of copra, 20 tons of sandalwood, and £3,000 worth of tortoiseshell.