Chapter 74: Retiring for the Night—the Doctor Grows Devout

They put us to bed very pleasantly.

Lying across the foot of Po-Po’s nuptial couch was a smaller one made of Koar-wood; a thin, strong cord, twisted from the fibres of the husk of the cocoa-nut, and woven into an exceedingly light sort of network, forming its elastic body. Spread upon this was a single, fine mat, with a roll of dried ferns for a pillow, and a strip of white tappa for a sheet. This couch was mine. The doctor was provided for in another corner.

Loo reposed alone on a little settee with a taper burning by her side; the dandy, her brother, swinging overhead in a sailor’s hammock The two gazelles frisked upon a mat near by; and the indigent relations borrowed a scant corner of the old butler’s pallet, who snored away by the open door. After all had retired, Po-Po placed the illuminated melon in the middle of the apartment; and so, we all slumbered till morning.

Upon awaking, the sun was streaming brightly through the open bamboos, but no one was stirring. After surveying the fine attitudes into which forgetfulness had thrown at least one of the sleepers, my attention was called off to the general aspect of the dwelling, which was quite significant of the superior circumstances of our host.

The house itself was built in the simple, but tasteful native style. It was a long, regular oval, some fifty feet in length, with low sides of cane-work, and a roof thatched with palmetto-leaves. The ridgepole was, perhaps, twenty feet from the ground. There was no foundation whatever; the bare earth being merely covered with ferns; a kind of carpeting which serves very well, if frequently renewed; otherwise, it becomes dusty, and the haunt of vermin, as in the huts of the poorer natives.