Carving a Cocoa-nut

Carving a Cocoa-nut (1877) Cornhill Magazine

THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NUT.

By GRANT ALLEN.

FOR many centuries the occult problem how to account for the milk in the cocoa-nut has awakened the profoundest interest alike of ingenious infancy and of maturer scientific age. Though it can not be truthfully affirmed of it, as of the cosmogony or creation of the world, in "The Vicar of Wakefield," that it "has puzzled the philosophers of all ages" (for Sanchoniathon was certainly ignorant of the very existence of that delicious juice, and Manetho doubtless went to his grave without ever having tasted it fresh from the nut under a tropical veranda), yet it may be safely asserted that for the last three hundred years the philosopher who has not at some time or other of his life meditated upon that abstruse question, is unworthy of such an exalted name. The cosmogony and the milk in the cocoa-nut are, however, a great deal closer together in thought than Sanchoniathon or Manetho, or the rogue who quoted them so glibly, is ever at all likely, in his wildest moments, to have imagined.

The cocoa-nut, in fact, is a subject well deserving of the most sympathetic treatment at the gentle hands of grateful humanity. No other plant is useful to us in so many diverse and remarkable manners. It has been truly said of that friend of man, the domestic pig, that he is all good, from the end of his snout to the tip of his tail; but even the pig, though he furnishes us with so many necessaries or luxuries—from tooth-brushes to sausages, from ham to lard, from pepsine-wine to pork pies—does not nearly approach, in the multiplicity and variety of his virtues, the all-sufficing and world-supplying cocoa-nut. A Chinese proverb says that there are as many useful properties in the cocoa-nut palm as there are days in the year; and a Polynesian saying tells us that the man who plants a cocoa-nut plants meat and drink, hearth and home, vessels and clothing, for himself and his children after him. Like the great Mr. Whiteley, the invaluable palm-tree might modestly advertise itself as a universal provider. The solid part of the nut supplies food almost alone to thousands of people daily, and the milk serves them for drink, thus acting as an efficient filter to the water absorbed by the roots in the most polluted or malarious regions. If you tap the flower-stalk you get a sweet juice, which can be boiled down into the peculiar sugar called (in the charming dialect of commerce) jaggery; or it can be fermented into a very nasty spirit known as palm-wine, toddy, or arrack; or it can be mixed with bitter herbs and roots to make that delectable compound "native beer." If you squeeze the dry nut you get cocoa-nut oil, which is as good as lard for frying when fresh, and is "an excellent substitute for butter at breakfast," on tropical tables. Under the mysterious name of copra (which most of us have seen with awe described in the market reports as "firm" or "weak," "receding" or "steady") it forms the main or only export of many oceanic islands, and is largely imported into this realm of England, where the thicker portion is called stearine, and used for making sundry candles with fanciful names, while the clear oil is employed for burning in ordinary lamps. In the process of purification, it yields glycerine; and it enters largely into the manufacture of most better-class soaps. The fiber that surrounds the nut makes up the other mysterious article of commerce known as coir, which is twisted into stout ropes, or woven into cocoa-nut matting and ordinary door-mats. Brushes and brooms are also made of it, and it is used, not always in the most honest fashion, in place of real horse-hair, in stuffing cushions. The shell, cut in half, supplies good cups, and is artistically carved by the Polynesians, Japanese, Hindoos, and other benighted heathen, who have not yet learned the true methods of civilized machine-made shoddy manufacture. The leaves serve as excellent thatch; on the flat blades, prepared like papyrus, the most famous Buddhist manuscripts are written; the long mid-ribs or branches (strictly speaking, the leaf-stalks) answer admirably for rafters, posts, or fencing; the fibrous sheath at the base is a remarkable natural imitation of cloth, employed for strainers, wrappers, and native hats; while the trunk, or stem, passes in carpentry under the name of porcupine-wood, and produces beautiful effects as a wonderfully-colored cabinet-maker's material. These are only a few selected instances out of the innumerable uses of the cocoa-nut palm.

Apart even from the manifold merits of the tree that bears it, the milk itself has many and great claims to our respect and esteem, as everybody who has ever drunk it in its native surroundings will enthusiastically admit. In England, to be sure, the white milk in the dry nuts is a very poor stuff, sickly, and strong-flavored and rather indigestible. But in the tropics, cocoa-nut milk, or, as we oftener call it there, cocoa-nut water, is a very different and vastly superior sort of beverage. At eleven o'clock every morning, when you are hot and tired with the day's work, your black servant, clad from head to foot in his cool clean white linen suit, brings you in a tall soda-glass full of a clear, light, crystal liquid, temptingly displayed against the yellow background of a chased Benares brass-work tray. The lump of ice bobs enticingly up and down in the center of the tumbler, or clinks musically against the edge of the glass as he carries it along. You take the cool cup thankfully and swallow it down at one long draught; fresh as a May morning, pure as an English hill-side spring, delicate as—well, as cocoa-nut water. None but itself can be its parallel. It is certainly the most delicious, dainty, transparent, crystal drink ever invented. How did it get there, and what is it for?

In the early green stage at which cocoa-nuts are generally picked for household use in the tropics, the shell hasn't yet solidified into a hard, stony coat, but still remains quite soft enough to be readily cut through with a sharp table-knife—just like young walnuts picked for pickling. If you cut one across while it's in this unsophisticated state, it is easy enough to see the arrangement of the interior, and the part borne by the milk in the development and growth of the mature nut. The ordinary tropical way of opening cocoa-nuts for table, indeed, is by cutting off the top of the shell and rind in successive slices, at the end where the three pores are situated, until you reach the level of the water, which fills up the whole interior. The nutty part around the inside of the shell is then extremely soft and jelly-like, so that it can be readily eaten with a spoon: but as a matter of fact very few people ever do eat the flesh at all. After their first few months in the tropics, they lose the taste for this comparatively indigestible part, and confine themselves entirely (like patients at a German spa) to drinking the water. A young cocoa-nut is thus seen to consist, first of a green outer skin, then of a fibrous coat, which afterward becomes the hair, and next of a harder shell which finally gets quite woody; while inside all comes the actual seed or unripe nut itself. The office of the cocoa-nut water is the deposition of the nutty part around the side of the shell; it is, so to speak, the mother-liquid, from which the harder eatable portion is afterward derived. This state is not uncommon in embryo seeds. In a very young pea, for example, the inside is quite watery, and only the outer skin is at all solid, as we have all observed when green peas first come into season. But the special peculiarity of the cocoa-nut consists in the fact that this liquid condition of the interior continues even after the nut is ripe, and that is the really curious point about the milk in the cocoa-nut which does actually need accounting for.

In order to understand it one ought to examine a cocoa-nut in the act of budding, and to do this it is by no means necessary to visit the West Indies or the Pacific Islands; all you need to do is to ask a Covent Garden fruit-salesman to get you a few "growers." On the voyage to England, a certain number of precocious cocoa-nuts, stimulated by the congenial warmth and damp of most ship-holds, usually begin to sprout before their time; and these waste nuts are sold by the dealers at a low rate to East End children and inquiring botanists. An examination of a "grower" very soon convinces one what is the use of the milk in the cocoa-nut.

It must be duly bone in mind, to begin with, that the prime end and object of the nut is not to be eaten raw by the ingenious monkey, or to be converted by lordly man into cocoa-nut biscuits, or cocoa-nut pudding, but simply and solely to reproduce the cocoa-nut palm in sufficient numbers to future generations. For this purpose the nut has slowly acquired by natural selection a number of protective defenses against its numerous enemies, which serve to guard it admirably in the native state from almost all possible animal depredators. First of all, the actual nut or seed itself consists of a tiny embryo plant, placed just inside the softest of the three pores or pits at the end of the shell, and surrounded by a vast quantity of nutritious pulp, destined to feed and support it during its earliest unprotected days, if not otherwise diverted by man or monkey. But, as whatever feeds a young plant will also feed an animal, and as many animals betray a felonious desire to appropriate to their own wicked ends the food-stuffs laid up by the palm for the use of its own seedling, the cocoa-nut has been compelled to inclose this particularly large and rich kernel in a very solid and defensive shell. And, once more, since the palm grows at a very great height from the ground—I have seen them up to ninety feet in favorable circumstances—this shell stands a very good chance of getting broken in tumbling to the earth, so that it has been necessary to surround it with a mass of soft and yielding fibrous material, which breaks its fall, and acts as a buffer to it when it comes in contact with the soil beneath. So many protections has the cocoa-nut gradually devised for itself by the continuous survival of the best adapted among numberless and endless spontaneous variations of all its kind in past time.

Now, when the cocoa-nut has actually reached the ground at last, and proceeds to sprout in the spot where chance (perhaps in the bodily shape of a disappointed monkey) has chosen to cast it, these numerous safeguards and solid envelopes naturally begin to prove decided nuisances to the embryo within. It starts under the great disadvantage of being hermetically sealed within a solid wooden shell, so that no water can possibly get at it to aid it as most other seeds are aided in the process of germination. Fancy yourself a seed-pea, anxious to sprout, but coated all round with a hard covering of impermeable sealing-wax, and you will be in a position faintly to appreciate the unfortunate predicament of a grower cocoa-nut. Natural selection, however—that deus ex machina of modern science, which can perform such endless wonders, if only you give it time enough to work in and variations enough to work upon—natural selection has come to the rescue of the unhappy plant by leaving it a little hole at the top of the shell, out of which it can push its feathery green head without difficulty. Everybody knows that if you look at the sharp end of a cocoa-nut you will see three little brown pits or depressions on its surface. Most people also know that two of these are firmly stopped up (for a reason to which I shall presently recur), but that the third one is only closed by a slight film or very thin shell, which can be easily bored through with a pocket-knife, so as to let the milk run off before cracking the shell. So much we have all learned during our ardent pursuit of natural knowledge on half-holidays in early life. But we probably then failed to observe that just opposite this soft hole lies a small, roundish knob, imbedded in the pulp or eatable portion, which knob is in fact the embryo palm or seedling, for whose ultimate benefit the whole arrangement (in brown and green) has been invented. That is very much the way with man: he notices what concerns his own appetite, and omits all the really important parts of the whole subject. We think the use of the hole is to let out the milk; but the nut knows that its real object is to let out the seedling. The knob grows out at last into the young plantlet, and it is by means of the soft hole that it makes its escape through the shell to the air and the sunshine which it seeks without.

This brings us really down at last to the true raison d’être for the milk in the cocoa-nut. As the seed or kernel can not easily get at much water from outside, it has a good supply of water laid up for it ready beforehand within its own encircling shell. The mother-liquid from which the pulp or nutty part has been deposited remains in the center, as the milk, till the tiny embryo begins to sprout. As soon as it does so, the little knob which was at first so very small enlarges rapidly and absorbs the water, till it grows out into a big, spongy cellular mass, which at last almost fills up the entire shell. At the same time, its other end pushes its way out through the soft hole, and then gives birth to a growing bud at the top—the future stem and leaves—and to a number of long threads beneath—the future roots. Meanwhile, the spongy mass inside begins gradually to absorb all the nutty part, using up its oils and starches for the purpose of feeding the young plant above, until it is of an age to expand its leaves to the open tropical sunlight and shift for itself in the struggle for life. It seems at first sight very hard to understand how any tissue so solid as the pulp of cocoa-nut can be thus softened and absorbed without any visible cause; but in the subtile chemistry of living vegetation such a transformation is comparatively simple and easy to perform. Nature sometimes works much greater miracles than this in the same way: for example, what is called vegetable ivory, a substance so solid that it can be carved or turned only with great difficulty, is really the kernel of another palm-nut, allied to the cocoa-palm, and its very stony particles are all similarly absorbed during germination by the dissolving power of the young seedling.

Why, however, has the cocoa-nut three pores at the top instead of one, and why are two out of the three so carefully and firmly sealed up? The explanation of this strange peculiarity is only to be found in the ancestral history of the cocoa-nut kind. Most nuts, indeed, start in their earlier stage as if they meant to produce two or more seeds each; but, as they ripen, all the seeds except one become abortive. The almond, for example, has in the flower two seeds or kernels to each nut; but in the ripe state there is generally only one, though occasionally we find an almond with two—a philopena, as we commonly call it—just to keep in memory the original arrangement of its earlier ancestors. The reason for this is that plants whose fruits have no special protection for their seeds are obliged to produce a great many of them at once, in order that one seed in a thousand may finally survive the onslaughts of their Argus-eyed enemies; but, when they learn to protect themselves by hard coverings from birds and beasts, they can dispense with some of these supernumerary seeds, and put more nutriment into each one of those that they still retain. Compare, for example, the innumerable small round seedlets of the poppy-head with the solitary large and richly-stored seed of the walnut, or the tiny black specks of mustard and cress with the single compact and well-filled seed of the filbert and the acorn. To the very end, however, most nuts begin in the flower as if they meant to produce a whole capsuleful of small unstored and unprotected seeds, like their original ancestors; it is only at the last moment that they recollect themselves, suppress all their ovules except one, and store that one with all the best and oiliest food-stuffs at their disposal. The nuts, in fact, have learned by long experience that it is better to be the only son and heir of a wealthy house, set up in life with a good capital to begin upon, than to be one of a poor family of thirteen needy and unprovided children.

Now, the cocoa-nuts are descended from a great tribe—the palms and lilies—which have as their main distinguishing peculiarity the arrangement of parts in their flowers and fruits by threes each. For example, in the most typical flowers of this great group, there are three green outer calyx-pieces, three bright-colored petals, three long outer stamens, three short inner stamens, three valves to the capsule, and three seeds or three rows of seeds in each fruit. Many palms still keep pretty well to this primitive arrangement, but a few of them which have specially protected or highly developed fruits or nuts have lost in their later stages the threefold disposition in the fruit, and possess only one seed, often a very large one. There is no better and more typical nut in the whole world than a cocoa-nut—that is to say, from our present point of view at least, though the fear of that awful person, the botanical Smelfungus, compels me to add that this is not quite technically true. Smelfungus, indeed, would insist upon it that the cocoa-nut is not a nut at all, and would thrill us with the delightful information, innocently conveyed in that delicious dialect of which he is so great a master, that it is really "a drupaceous fruit with a fibrous mesocarp." Still, in spite of Smelfungus with his nice, hair-splitting distinctions, it remains true that humanity at large will still call a nut a nut, and that the cocoa-nut is the highest known development of the peculiar nutty tactics. It has the largest and most richly stored seed of any known plant; and this seed is surrounded by one of the hardest and most unmanageable of any known shells. Hence the cocoa-nut has readily been able to dispense with the three kernels which each nut used in its earlier and less developed days to produce. But though the palm has thus taken to reducing the number of its seeds in each fruit to the lowest possible point consistent with its continued existence at all, it still goes on retaining many signs of its ancient threefold arrangement. The ancestral and most deeply ingrained habits persist in the earlier stages; it is only in the mature form that the later acquired habits begin fully to predominate. Even so our own boys pass through an essentially savage childhood of ogres and fairies, bows and arrows, sugar-plums and barbaric nursery tales, as well as a romantic boyhood of mediaeval chivalry and adventure, before they steady down into that crowning glory of our race, the solid, sober, matter-of-fact, commercial British Philistine. Hence the cocoa-nut in its unstripped state is roughly triangular in form, its angles answering to the separate three fruits of simpler palms; and it has three pits or weak places in the shell, through which the embryos of the three original kernels used to force their way out. But as only one of them is now needed, that one alone is left soft; the other two, which would be merely a source of weakness to the plant if unprotected, are covered in the existing nut by harder shell. Doubtless they serve in part to deceive the too inquisitive monkey or other enemy, who probably concludes that, if one of the pits is hard and impermeable, the other two are so likewise.

Though I have now, I hope, satisfactorily accounted for the milk in the cocoa-nut, and incidentally for some other matters in its economy as well, I am loath to leave the young seedling, whom I have brought so far on his way, to the tender mercies of the winds and storms and tropical animals, some of whom are extremely fond of his juicy and delicate shoots. Indeed, the growing point or bud of most palms is a very pleasant succulent vegetable, and one kind—the West Indian mountain-cabbage—deserves a better and more justly descriptive name, for it is really much more like seakale or asparagus. I shall try to follow our young seedling on in life, therefore, so as to give, while I am about it, a fairly comprehensive and complete biography of a single flourishing cocoa-nut palm.

Beginning, then, with the fall of the nut from the parent-tree, the troubles of the future palm confront it at once in the shape of the nut-eating crab. This evil-disposed crustacean is common around the sea-coast of the Eastern tropical islands, which is also the region mainly affected by the cocoa-nut palm; for cocoa-nuts are essentially shore-loving trees, and thrive best in the immediate neighborhood of the sea. Among the fallen nuts, the clumsy-looking thief of a crab (his appropriate Latin name is Birgus latro) makes great and dreaded havoc. To assist him in his unlawful object he has developed a pair of front legs, with specially strong and heavy claws, supplemented by a last or tail-end pair armed only with very narrow and slender pincers. He subsists entirely upon a cocoa-nut diet. Setting to work upon a big fallen nut—with the husk on, cocoa-nuts measure in the raw state about twelve inches the long way—he tears off all the coarse fiber bit by bit, and gets down at last to the hard shell. Then he hammers away with his heavy claw on the softest eye-hole till he has pounded an opening right through it. This done he twists round his body so as to turn his back upon the cocoa-nut he is operating upon (crabs are never famous either for good manners or gracefulness) and proceeds awkwardly but effectually to extract all the white kernel or pulp through the breach with his narrow pair of hind pincers. Like man, too, the robber-crab knows the value of the outer husk as well as of the eatable nut itself, for he collects the fiber in surprising quantities to line his burrow and lies upon it, the clumsy sybarite, for a luxurious couch. Alas, however, for the helplessness of crabs and the rapacity and cunning of all-appropriating man! The spoil-sport Malay digs up the nest for the sake of the fiber it contains, which spares him the trouble of picking junk on his own account, and then he eats the industrious crab who has laid it all up, while he melts down the great lump of fat under the robber's capacious tail, and sometimes gets from it as much as a good quart of what may be practically considered as limpid cocoa-nut oil. Sic vos non vobis is certainly the melancholy refrain of all natural history. The cocoa-nut palm intends the oil for the nourishment of its own seedling; the crab feloniously appropriates it and stores it up under his capacious tail for future personal use; the Malay steals it again from the thief for his own purposes; and ten to one the Dutch or English merchant beguiles it from him with sized calico or poisoned rum, and transmits it to Europe, where it serves to lighten our nights and assist at our matutinal tub, to point a moral and adorn the present tale.

If, however, our cocoa-nut is lucky enough to escape the robber-crabs, the pigs, and the monkeys, as well as to avoid falling into the hands of man, and being converted into the copra of commerce, or sold from a costermonger's barrow in the chilly streets of ungenial London at a penny a slice, it may very probably succeed in germinating after the fashion I have already described, and pushing up its head through the surrounding foliage to the sunlight above. As a rule, the cocoa-nut has been dropped by its mother-tree on the sandy soil of a sea-beach; and this is the spot it best loves, and where it grows to the stateliest height. Sometimes, however, it falls into the sea itself, and then the loose husk buoys it up, so that it floats away bravely till it is cast by the waves upon some distant coral reef or desert island. It is this power of floating and surviving a long voyage that has dispersed the cocoa-nut so widely among oceanic islands, where so few plants are generally to be found. Indeed, on many atolls or isolated reefs (for example, on Keeling Island) it is the only tree or shrub that grows in any quantity, and on it the pigs, the poultry, the ducks, and the land-crabs of the place entirely subsist. In any case, wherever it happens to strike, the young cocoa-nut sends up at first a fine rosette of big, spreading leaves, not raised as afterward on a tall stem, but springing direct from the ground in a wide circle, something like a very big and graceful fern. In this early stage nothing can be more beautiful or more essentially tropical in appearance than a plantation of young cocoa-nuts. Their long, feathery leaves spreading out in great clumps from the buried stock, and waving with lithe motion before the strong sea-breeze of the Indies, are the very embodiment of those deceptive ideal tropics which, alas! are to be found in actual reality nowhere on earth save in the artificial palm-houses at Kew, and the Casino Gardens at too entrancing Monte Carlo.

For the first two or three years the young palms must be well watered, and the soil around them opened; after which the tall, graceful stem begins to rise rapidly into the open air. In this condition it may be literally said to make the tropics—those fallacious tropics, I mean, of painters and poets, of "Enoch Arden" and of "Locksley Hall." You may observe that, whenever an artist wants to make a tropical picture, he puts a group of cocoa-nut palms in the foreground, as much as to say, "You see there's no deception; these are the genuine, unadulterated tropics." But as to painting the tropics without the palms, he might just as well think of painting the desert without the camels. At eight or ten years old the tree flowers, bearing blossoms of the ordinary palm-type, degraded likenesses of the lilies and yuccas, greenish and inconspicuous, but visited by insects for the sake of their pollen. The flower, however, is fertilized by the wind, which carries the pollen-grains from one bunch of blossoms to another. Then the nuts gradually swell out to an enormous size, and ripen very slowly, even under the brilliant tropical sun. (I will admit that the tropics are hot, though in other respects I hold them to be arrant impostors, like that precocious American youth who announced on his tenth birthday that in his opinion life wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.) But the worst thing about the cocoa-nut palm, the missionaries always say, is the fatal fact that, when once fairly started, it goes on bearing fruit uninterruptedly for forty years. This is very immoral and wrong of the ill-conditioned tree, because it encourages the idyllic Polynesian to lie under the palms all day long, cooling his limbs in the sea occasionally, sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Neæra's hair, and waiting for the nuts to drop down in due time, when he ought (according to European notions) to be killing himself with hard work under a blazing sky, raising cotton, sugar, indigo, and coffee, for the immediate benefit of the white merchant,and the ultimate advantage of the British public. It doesn't enforce habits of steady industry and perseverance, the good missionaries say; it doesn't induce the native to feel that burning desire for Manchester piece-goods and the other blessings of civilization which ought properly to accompany the propagation of the missionary in foreign parts. You stick your nut in the sand; you sit by a few years and watch it growing; you pick up the ripe fruits as they fall from the tree; and you sell them at last for illimitable red cloth to the Manchester piece-goods merchant. Nothing could be more simple or more satisfactory. And yet it is difficult to see the precise moral distinction between the owner of a cocoa-nut grove in the South-Sea Islands and the owner of a coal-mine or a big estate in commercial England. Each lounges decorously through life after his own fashion; only the one lounges in a Russia-leather chair at a club in Pall Mall, while the other lounges in a nice soft dust-heap beside a rolling surf in Tahiti or the Hawaiian Archipelago.

Curiously enough, at a little distance from the sandy levels or alluvial flats of the sea-shore, the sea-loving cocoa-nut will not bring its nuts to perfection. It will grow, indeed, but it will not thrive or fruit in due season. On the coast-line of Southern India, immense groves of cocoa-nuts fringe the shore for miles and miles together; and in some parts, as in Travancore, they form the chief agricultural staple of the whole country. "The state has hence facetiously been called Cocoanutcore," says its historian; which charmingly illustrates the true Anglo-Indian notion of what constitutes facetiousness, and ought to strike the last nail into the coffin of a competitive examination system. A good tree in full bearing should produce one hundred and twenty cocoa-nuts in a season; so that a very small grove is quite sufficient to maintain a respectable family in decency and comfort. Ah, what a mistake the English climate made when it left off its primitive warmth of the Tertiary period, and got chilled by the ice and snow of the Glacial epoch down to its present misty and dreary wheat-growing condition! If it were not for that, those odious habits of steady industry and perseverance might never have been developed in ourselves at all, and we might be lazily picking copra off our own cocoa-palms, to this day, to export in return for the piece-goods of some Arctic Manchester situated somewhere about the north of Spitzbergen or the New Siberian Islands.

Even as things stand at the present day, however, it is wonderful how much use we modern Englishmen now make in our own houses of this far Eastern nut, whose very name still bears upon its face the impress of its originally savage origin. From morning to night we never leave off being indebted to it. We wash with it as old brown Windsor or glycerine soap the moment we leave our beds. We walk across our passages on the mats made from its fiber. We sweep our rooms with its brushes, and wipe our feet on it as we enter our doors. As rope, it ties up our trunks and packages; in the hands of the house-maids it scrubs our floors; or else, woven into coarse cloth, it acts as a covering for bales and furniture sent by rail or steamboat. The confectioner undermines our digestion in early life with cocoanut candy; the cook tempts us later on with cocoa-nut cake; and Messrs. Huntley and Palmer cordially invite us to complete the ruin with cocoa-nut biscuits. We anoint our chapped hands with one of its preparations after washing; and grease the wheels of our carriages with another to make them run smoothly. Finally, we use the oil to burn in our reading-lamps, and light ourselves at last to bed with stearine-candles. Altogether, an amateur census of a single small English cottage results in the startling discovery that it contains twenty-seven distinct articles which owe their origin in one way or another to the cocoa-nut palm. And yet we affect, in our black ingratitude, to despise the question of the milk in the cocoa-nut.—Cornhill Magazine.

Coconuts and Cannibals

After about 12 years of searching, this little Verrill story surfaced. It is one of the final five fiction works that remained unfound; now it, like the others resides on this blog, an unofficial source of all of A. Hyatt Verrill's works./drf

Coconuts and Cannibals

A Funny Story of A Funny Ship

by A. Hyatt Verrill

From Far East Adventure Stories, December 1931

“HOWDY,” RUMBLED the old sailor, as I strolled down the wharf and found him at his favorite spot, gazing fixedly at the sea and dangling a hand-line for cunners.

Then, without turning his head; “See anything out yonder?” he asked,

“Yes,” I replied, glancing across the Sound, “A couple of three-masters and a square-rigger.”

“Square-rigger, eh?” muttered the old man, turning his grizzled head and squinting at the horizon, “Don’t see many of ’em knockin’ about now­adays, Can ye see what she be an’ how she’s standin’? My eyes ain’t what they used to be.”

“She’s a bark,” I told him, "Stand­ing to the eastward under fore and main topsails and to’ gallant sails, spanker, and fore to’ gallant staysail and jib,”

“Hmm,” muttered the old salt, as he knocked the ashes from his cold pipe and expectantly extended his hand, I handed him my pouch and he proceeded to ram a generous load into his pipe, “Speakin’ o’ barks, ’minds me o’ the Harvey Fullerton. Did I ever tell ye o’ my cruise in her?”

“Don’t believe you ever did,” I replied, filling my own pipe, I seated myself on the stringpiece of the wharf beside him and waited for the old fellow to light his pipe with the matches I supplied.

Presently his reeking clay was vomiting smoke like a miniature volcano, and I knew that a salty tale was being hatched in his fertile brain.

“THE FULLERTON,” he began at last, “was a New London ship, least­wise New London was her home port, and a barkentine. ’Tany rate, if she wa’n’t a barkentine I dunno what She was. But the gosh-dingest barkentine what ever me or ye or any other chap ever clapped eyes onto. If ye’d seed her out yonder ye couldn't have told which way she was headin’. Why? Ye’re askin’; ’cause she was built an’ rigged starn-fo’most with a square-rigged mizzen an’ fore-an’-aft fo’-mast an’ mainmast. Crazy idea, ye’ll say, an’ p’rhaps ’twas; an’ so me an’ me mates thought.

“But arter all, I dunno, as ’twas so all-fired crazy at that. The fellow what owned her must have had some sense in his head, even if he did live up to Willimantic an’ hadn’t never seed salt water nor nary craft bigger ’n a canal boat. He’d read a heap o’ books though, an’ he calc’lated that seein’ as a square-rigger was best afore the wind, an’ a fore-an’-aft ship was best on the wind, he could get the good p’ints o’ both by puttin’ of square sails after to catch a star wind, an’ fore-an’-aft sails for’ard to catch a head wind. An’ derned if it didn’t work out!

“But twas a all-fired job to get a crew o’ sailor-men to ship along on her. No sooner would they clap eyes onto that there starn-fust rig than they’d shake their heads an’ walk away, an’ the only ones what would sign on was bums what couldn’t get nothin’ else or greenies what didn’t know a rope-end from a marlin-spike.

“Dunno why I shipped myself. But I cal’clate it was just out o’ cur’osity to see how the consarned old hooker would sail; or mebbe ’cause old man Stebbins was skipper on her an’ I’d been shipmates with him afore.

An’ the cargo what she loaded was just as plumb crazy as the ship. Ye couldn’t never guess what ’twas in a month o’ Sundays, so I might just as well tell ye an’ be done with it. ’Twas skates an’ hatracks an’ sunbonnets an’ aprons! Yes, sir, queerest lot o’ cargo ever I'd seed or heard of. I reckon old man Fullerton just shipped what they made up to his shops. Ye see, ’bout that time, there was a big New England trade on with the West Injies, an’ folks was sendin’ down the most cur’ostest things not known’ nothin’ ’bout the islan’s, and mission­aries was just openin’ up the South Seas an’ Christianizin’ o’ the natives.

Well, this Fullerton bird calc’iated as he could ship skates to Newfunlan’ an’ trade ’em for salt codfish, he bein’ a reg’lar Yankee trader an’ not doin’ no cash business on the whole v’age, an’ then send the codfish to the West Injies an’ make a trade with it for rum an’ molasses an’ sugar and sech.

Then we was to sail ’round the Horn an’ trade the aprons an’ sun-bon­nets to the naked cannibals—reckon old Fullerton thought mebbe the rum might come in handy for to get the natives too drunk to know what they were trading an’ bring back copra an’ pearl shell.

And where was them hatracks go-in’? You might be askin’. To South Ameriky, to be sure. Fullerton allowed as how them there Dons always wore whoppin’ big hats and spurs an such like, an’ that every man-jack of ’em would need a private an’ per­sonal hatrack for to hang his duds on.

Now I expect ye’re a thinkin’ this here’s just an ord’nary yarn, which it ain’t. No, sir, ’taint one of them there whoppers what some folks I’ve heard of are everlastin’ly tellin’. Nothing like that there story book what ya was readin’ of ’tother day about a cruise o’ a crew o’ city chaps what went to the South Seas an’ found square birds’ eggs an’ such all. There weren’t never no such things as square eggs, an’ ye know it well as me. An’ as for white shadders, who ever heard tell of a white shadder? Though there’s plenty o’ white men knockin’ about out there what ain’t nothin’ more’n shadders at that.

Howsomever, I’m a gettin’ often my couse an’ missin’ stays, so I’d better about ship an’ be a gettin’ on. Wal, as I was sayin’, we had a bum crew. Outside the skipper an’ me there was the first mate—rum short o’ chap named Finny from down the Cape somewheres. Second named Rooney—a crazy Irishman with a peg-leg, an’ every time he got roiled an’ started somethin’ he’d pull off his timber leg to slam some chap an’ forget about it an’ tumble all over his-self an’ the deck, a cussin’ most dref-ful. Bosun, he was a Portugee from New Bedford—an old whale man an’ a mighty good sailor man, even if he was a Dago, an’ the crew was just a paddel of bums.

O, yes, there was another chap, too, a fellow by name o’ Henry, sort o’ supergargo sent along by old Fullerton to look after the accounts an’ such like the owner not trustin’ skip­per to attend to ’em. Wust lan’ lubber ever I see, that there Henry, an’ thought he know a heap about the sea, too. And reckoned he was might funny. Used to crack his sides, tellin’ a yarn about a cruise what he took on a schooner called the Flounder out o’ Gloucester with a cap’m name of Turbot. I knowed a skipper o’ that name once an’ didn’t tumble to the joke ’til Henry told how the schooner was that full that not a soul aboard had a place for to eat.

Howsomever, soon as we was out o’ the Sound, Henry took to his berth an’ never said nothin’ more till we made port again, so he don’t matter none nohow.

Skipper Stebbins was one o’ them cap’ns what had got religion—turned parson once, but he used to forget hisself when he got a preachin’ an’ would swear scandalous in the pulpit if he got a mite excited an’ had to quit. But so long’s we was bound for heathen lands he vowed he’d have to save some souls, so he took ’long enough tracts an’ Bibles to fill a yawl boat. Wal, we got clear at last. Fine summer morning, ’twas, and the tug come alongside an’ towed us down stream’ an’ out past Watch Hill and dropped us outside.

While we’d been towin’ out we’d been makin’ sail, there being a fair wind an’ soon’s ever the tug left us we squared away to the nor’east with our square-rigged mizzen a catchin’ all the wind an’ enough left over for to fill them big fore-an’-aft sails and a shovin’ the old hooker along at a twelve knot clip if she made a foot. ’Cause all hands what was sailors was mighty cur’ous to see bow she’d behave, an’ we was everlastin’ly blowcd to find of her rip-snorin’ along that way. But just the same, twa’nt right to look aft an’ see them there square sails an’ look for’ard an’ see fore-an’-aft canvas, and every time I walked along aft to take my turn to the wheel I had to walk backwards, by gum, or I’d have found myself headin’ for the fo’c’sle instead of the poop!

So it was on thet consarned pipe dream. Thar weren’t nothin’ thet weren’t backards, e’en when yuh went climbin’ up yuh was liable to find yur-self taking a header down below.

ABOUT THE third day arter Nantucket lightship was hull down, the wind hauled round and then our troubles began. Along about the middle o’ the night watch it was, when the wind drawed around to the east’ard an the mate begun bawlin’ out orders to swing yards an trim sail, Wal, sir, ’twas darker ’n a pocket, an’ we just had to find braces and sheets an’ haliards by feelin’, an the first thing we knowed, the old hooker was wallowin’ in the trough o’ the sea all aback, an’ the helsman a-singin’ out that the derned rudder’d went adrift, an’ things was in a holy mess.

First the old ship would come up into the wind for a jiffy an’ then she’d yaw an’ fall off an’, blow me for a sojer, if every time she come up she didn’t sail starn fo’rnost! An’ what do you guess the trouble was? Why, that there consarned mate had clean forgotten how the Fullerton was rigged and had just ordered sail set same as if she was an ord nary barkentine an’ ’course the ol’ hooker was a-dooin’ of her level best for to sail starn fust.

Wal, the rumpus woke up the Old Man an’ he come on deck and seen what the trouble was an’ bawled out to furl all square sails which same was did an’ after a bit we got the old Fullerton headed into the wind an’ on her course again.

But we didn’t never fetch, Newfunlan’. No, sir, just offen Nova Scotia we run into a nasty nor’wester, an’ the consarned old craft had to just turn tail an’ run afore it. Never did see such a gale’ wind lastin so all fired long. For six mortal days and night it blowed a livin’ hur’eane and we scuddin’ afore it under all but bare poles. And then, just as a sort o’ partin’ kiss, so to speak, she let out one big blow an’ takes two o’ the sticks clean outen the old hooker.

“Wal, there we be driftin’ about, south o’ Bermuda, with just a square-rigged mizzen, what wasn’t a mite o’ use, standin’. Wal, to make a long story short, so to say, the Old Man had the yards sent down. He was a proper sailor man for his prayin’ sanctimon’ous ways an’ with them we rigged up a couple o’ jury masts settin’ the mizzen topsails for trysails and as we couldn’t do nothin’ else we set a course for St. Thomas, that be­in’ the nearest place where we could refit.

We fetched the island all right and while we was gettin’ new sticks, set up we had to break outa bit o’ the cargo for to work below decks. We was doin’ this one mornin’ when a big mullato Dane comes over the side, chap named Oleson he was, an’ had a big ship chand’lry shop an’ general store in town—and as he comes along the deck one o’ the cases o’ skates busts open.

Ole son stops an’ looks at ’em. “What's ’em?” he says.

“Skates,” says I.

“And what be skates an’ for what?" he asks, him bein’ a Danish nigger an’ not knowin’ about such things.

Wal, I was a bit peeved at havin’ to be workin’ in the sun when there was plenty o’ niggers to do the job an’ good rum shore, an’ I answers kind o’ short an’ impatient like. “Can’t ye see for yerself that they be?” says I. “And they’re mostly used for Christmas presents to home,” says I.

At that Oleson tips his big floppin’ hat for’ard an’ scratches his kinky yaller head for a minute an’ then he slaps his leg an’ says.

“They’re just what I’ve been wantin’,” he says. “Do ye know if they’re for sale or on consignment?”

“Go and see the skipper or the su­percargo about ’em,” I tells him, and with that I goes on with my work.

And I'll be everlastin’ly keelhauled if he didn’t make a dicker an’ take all them consarned skates offen our hands, givin’ us bay rum in trade. What in tarnation he wanted with all them there skates down there in St. Thomas, where it’s hotter’n blazes, an’ the only ice they ever seen was brought down in barr’ls from Maine, I couldn’t figger out. So, bein’ a cur'ous sort o’ cuss, as ye know, I made up my mind for to find out soon as ever I got shore leave, which was next day, But I’ll be blowed if I seen a sign o’ a skate in town. So in I walks to Oleson’s place and asks the clerk about ’em.

“Oh,” says he. “We ain’t showin’ ’em yet, They’re emblems o’ the Christmas season and Mister Oleson calc’late to hang ’em outside his stores for to advertise his stock o’ Christmas good when the time comes,”

And I’ll bet ye, if ye go down to St, Thomas today, you’ll find them there same old skates a-hangin’ in bunches like grapes outside o’ all the shops long towards Christmas. Yes, sir. West Injins is queer guys. Re­member that there yarn I telled ye about them warming-pans what was shipped down an’ how the folks used ’em for sugar-ladles?

HOWSOMEVER, that’s nothin’ to do with this here cruise o’ the Fullerton. By an’ by, the old hooker was rigged an’ ready for sea, but ye never would have known her, ’cause why? ’Cause the skipper had rigged her fore-an’-aft on fore an’ mizzenmasts an’ square on the mainmast. Seemed as how him an’ Henry had an argument over it. The Old Man insisted he was goin’ for to rig her ship-shape barkentine style, while Henry swore he was the owner’s agent and if Fullerton wanted his ship rigged starn fo’most, then starn-fo’most she’d stay. Seem’ as neither would give in, an’ as Henry had the money to pay for the refittin’, the Old Man and him finally split the difference an’ shoved the square-rigged stick amidships.

The next port o’ call, accordin’ to orders, was South Ameriky where we was to trade off them hatracks. So we squared away down the islands and I will say as how that new-fan­gled rig worked mighty pretty an’ I’ve been wonderin’, many’s the time since, why folks didn’t never build ships that way. Ye see, when sailin’ to windward or with a beam wind, everything would draw, and if we was takin’ we just used the fore-an’-aft canvas, while, if we was runnin’ free, we winged out the for-anmizzen and set upper sails on the main, and there we be!

I disremember just where ’twas, but along offen Barbadoes somewhere that we run into the all firedest big school o’ sharks what ever I seen. And then, it bein’ pretty nigh a dead calm, all hands set to, a-tryin’ to catch them critters. But they was so consarned big that no hook nor tackle we had would hold ’em. Wal, sir, the ship now bein’ pretty steady, that Henry fellow—him not feelin’ sick comes up on deck and watches us for a spell. Then he up an’ asks the skipper to open a hatch and he goes down with a couple o’ hands and fetches up one o’ them hatracks. Ye know the kind they was —thing made o’ a lot o’ sticks stand-in’ up from a sort o’ middle spar.

Then Henry makes one end o’ a coil o’ line fast to the hatrack, an’ heaves her over, an’ I’ll be dumb-swizzled if a whoppin’ big shark didn’t grab it soon’s ever it hit the water. And there he was! Them there prongs just stuck in his throat like about a dozen big hooks, an’ reavin’ the line through a tackle, we tailed on an’ had that there shark on deck in less’n no time. Just then the wind come up an’ the mate com­menced hollerin’ orders an’ I reckon ’twas lucky at that, or else we’d all been fishin’ for sharks with them there hatracks an’ them South Ameriky chaps wouldn’t never have got ’em.

I don’t rightly know what the name o’ the place was where we put in at, but ’twas some “Santa” or other—don’t, make a mite o’ difference no­how—and Henry had some o’ them hatrack gadjets broken out o’ the hold an’ sends ’em ashore and sets ’em down outside a inn whilst he goes inside for a drink before a startin’ to do business. Just then along comes a couple o’ chaps dashin’ up horse back and all rigged out fit to kill in big hats and jinglin’ spurs an’ sashes an’ cloaks an’ such-like.

Pullin’ up alongside the inn they sees Henry’s hatracks standin’ there convenient-like an’ thinkin’ Mister Innkeeper’d got some new-fangled kind o’ hitchin’ posts they heaves their bridles over them racks and stomps inside. Wal, that was all what was needed. After that, every consarned inn and pub in the place had to have a hatrack hitchin’-post outside to do any business, an’ we was three mortal days stowin’ the hides an’ coffee an’ rubber what we took in trade for them there gadjets. Beats all what fool luck some folks do have.

Now there ain’t a mite o’ use in me a tellin’ ye about the run down the coast an’ round the Horn, ’ceptin’ we all wished we had them there skates for to get about the decks with when we struck cold weather an’ the old hooker iced up. But we was mighty glad we had them two fore-an’-aft sails, ’stead o’ square yards, an’ we just stripped off the mainmast canvas an’ worked round the Horn under fore an’ mizzen, ’cause no mortal man could have handled square sails in the weather what we had. But we got round at last, and mighty thank­ful at that, an’ stood away for the South Sea Islands.

When we fetched the first one the Old Man was pretty nigh flabber­gasted to see all them folks, men an’ wimmen, runnin’ around just as naked as the day they was born. So, without waitin’ to give Henry a chance for to trade, he gets out them aprons an’ sunbonnets an’ passes of ’em around to them heathen savages. An’ what do ye think? Them critters was tickled to death. They grabbed the bonnets an’ tied ’em on for bustles an’ wrapped the aprons ’round their heads for turbans, an’ goes struttin’ up an’ down the decks as proud as peacocks! Wal, sir, skipper wasn’t no better off than before, so, hidin’ his eyes an’ blushin’ somethin’ awful, he shoos ’em off, an’ findin’ they don’t have no shell nor copra he takes on a lot o’ coconuts an’ sets sail for the next island.

HERE THE folks wears clothes in the shape o’ grass petticoats, an’ they also got plenty o’ copra an’ shell, so the Old Man opens up the hatches an’ rigs hoistin’ tackle an’ slings to the mainyard an’ gets ready for to trade. Seein’ as how the skipper’d given away all them aprons and bonnets at t’other island, we didn’t have nothin’ to trade, ’ceptin’ the bay rum what we got to St. Thomas and the coffee and hides an’ rubber what we took on over to South Ameriky.

’Course the islanders didn’t have no use for hides or coffee or rubber, but the cap’n an’ Henry figured as how the bay rum might have taken— seem’ as how ’twas mostly made o’ good Santa Cruz rum an’ smelled mighty nice. And I’ll be bilged if it didn’t take too consarned well at that. Gosh A’mighty! The old chief just took one sniff o’ that there stuff an’ poured a bit down his scuppers an’ he was ready for to trade every­thin’ he had. And right then and there that dumb-swizzled fool Henry made a big mistake. Thinkin’ to get the copra and shell aboard faster, he gives out a dozen cases o’ bay rum before more’n half a ton o’ shell an’ a couple o’ canoe loads o’ copra was alongside and then, o’ course them consarned savages just sot down an’ got themselves plumb fightin’ drunk.

We could hear of ’em a-yellin' and squealin’ over to the village and when no more stuff comes off the skipper sends a boat ashore for to see what was the trouble. But that boat never touched the beach, I tell ye. Soon’s ever they seen us comin’ they grabs up spears and clubs an’ such an’ comes tearin’ an’ yellin’ for us and we just turns tail an’ pulls like blue blazes for the ship. Lucky thing they was too drunk to handle canoes or I wouldn’t be here tellin’ ye about it.

And we was in a pretty fix. There we be, anchored inside the lagoon and not a breath o’ wind stirrin’ the palm trees and with a passel o’ can­nibals carousin’ ashore an’ us with no way o’ gettin’ clear. We knowed, soon’s ever them blacks had guzzled all the bay rum they had, that they’d be comin’ out to stick us up and gather in the rest o’ the stuff and skipper—him bein’ such a sanctimo­nious chap, and a man o’ peace—we didn’t have no guns aboard. Wal, there we be, settin’ an’ waitin’ for to have our throats slit—an’ like as not et arterwards—and not knowin’ what to do, when Rooney gives a yell an’ bangs his peg-leg on the deck.

“B’gorra I have it!” says he. “B’ys, break out that there rubber an’ be lively about it!”

Not knowin’ nor carin’ what the idea was, but willin’ for to do most anythin’ just to keep our minds offen them wild cannibals ashore, we falls to and gets them bales o’ rubber on deck. It had been tarnation hot weather for weeks past and the rub­ber’d got soft and sticky-like, and Rooney sets us all to work pullin’ of it out and twistin’ of it into cables. Then he fetches up a barrel o’ sul­phur, what we had for fumigatin’ the ship in case o’ fever and we rubbed the brimstone over the rubber cables an’ lays ’em out in the sun. Next, Rooney orders us to get a hide outen the hold, and he fastens one end o’ the rubber cables to this and t’other ends to a couple o’ sheer-poles rig­ged up alongside o’ the rail, and then we begins for to see what he’s doin'.

Gosh all hemlock! There he had the aimightiest big slungshot what ever was, and we hadn’t no more’n finished it when about fifty canoes came a skyhootin’ from shore filled chock-o-block with savages. Soon’s they come about two cables’ lengths off, Rooney clapped a tackle onto the hide with a lashing to a snatch-block —an’ drawin’ the things-mabob clean back to t’other rail he dumps a sack o’ coconuts into the hide an’ cuts the lashin’s with his knife.

Holy mackerel! Ye’d oughta seed them nuts go shootin’ when them big rubber cables go! Talk about bomb­shells. Some o’ them there nuts struck the canoes an’ busted and knocked the niggers all about.

’Tothers plumped into the water alongside, while them cannibals what was hit fair might just as well been struck by a six-inch shell. But they was game all right. Some on ’em got nigh enough the ship to heave a few spears and arrers, but a couple o’ more loads o' nuts finished ’em.

An’ just then a breeze comes up, an’ slippin’ our cable we got clear o’ the lagoon. But the last shot was too consarned much for them sheerpoles, and rubbers an’ hide an’ poles an’ all went flyin’ off together. Seem’ as the sheerpoles was made outen the main torpsail yards we couldn’t use the mainmast for square canvas, so we put into Samoa and rigged the old Fullerton as a three-masted schooner afore we sailed home, and there was one square-rigger less.”

The old sailor stopped and refilled his pipe.

“That’s a corker of a yarn,” I chuckled, “Beats any you’ve told me yet.” Slowly he rose to his feet and looked down at me with a hurt expression on his weather-beaten face.

“Meanin’ you don’t believe it,” he said in injured tones. “Wal, o’ course folks what ain’t never been to sea don’t know what almighty queer things does happen. Howsomever, if ye’ll come up to my place 1 can prove it’s true, I got one o’ the pearl shells an’ a arrer up there.”