Evening star., 1925-02-22

lul Dlue-BTeen OF the cane
4 fields strikes you like high
note in song. Almost al
the year the trade winds blow about
these low islands OF the teen and
twenty latitudes; You are sure, wher
YOU come mp to Tarabora. and anchor
off the sparkling, red-roofed town
to find the wind, as ever, at play
with the green lagoons of canefield
that surround the township, and the
grape blue shadows at play with the
wind; and you will ask yourself, as
you have asked before, why no one
ever speaks or thinks of the lowell
ness of this most lovely thing.
Certainly, the people who live on
Tarabora do not think the sugar
cane lovely. They are all company
folk, and they have no time to trouble
about peacock ks-neck colors running
riot in the fields, or songs that the
trade-wind. gypsy king of all the
winds that blow, sings in the ripping
leaves of the nine-foot purple-stem
med New Guinea
In the early morning, before the
sun has crept down from the gllded
peak of Drama, the first of the COM
pany men come out on the Verandas
Horses are waiting; legs are swung
over saddles; women in white morn
ing wrappers set down half-emptied
v
end of the town the whistle screams
from the great gray iron mill. The
overSeerS are away.
From the handsome bungalows at
the end of the town come, later. men
in suits of Assam silk, and boots i'm
ported from home; men whose hair
is thinning and whose figures, in ex-
pensive Jackets and cummerbunds, are
not, by great deal, so good to look
on as the lean young shapes of the
shirted overseers. These are the peo-
pie who count on Tarabora; man.
ayers of departments; estate manag-
ers come in to report to the q. NJ. {;
mill superintendents. chief account
ants, and-"last, exquisite, apart
the c. NJ. himself. You might have
lived long on Tarabora and never
have heard it's general manager
spoken of as Wilbur Redding, Mr..
Redding, Redding, or any other com
bination of his actual names. Sir
in his presence, THE G.. NJ" in his alb
sence, represented Wilbur Redding,
tenant of the biggest bungalow, occu-
pant of the biggest office and holder
of the highest salary and the great
est dignity on Tarabora.
He was young for c.. NJ; not much
over 40, and if he was, like all the
big officials a trifle fat, his height
carried if off. Those, inches, and the
heavy black mustache. pinched,
straight nose and big eyes, gray and
hard, but handsome, entitled him (con-
sidering his salary) to be called q fasci-
mating man, and every single woman
on Tarabara felt the fascination, and
wondered, and sometimes hoped.
For the G.. NJ, prize Of prizes, was
unmarried.
Perhaps this had something to do
with the number of unwedded women
on the island. During the reign OF
the previous G. NJ. who had a wife
and five children, the white women
We're nearly all wives 1t was the
custom to get married on the island,
no matter where you had met your
bride. Tarabora was very remote in
deed, and the difference between three
steamer fares and one was of serious
consequences. So nobody went south to
get married, and the girls who came
were almost all prospective brides.
= y x x
DUT the new G.. NJ. brought in a
1S new element Mrs. Assistant
Manager Mrs. Accountant, even Mrs.
Overseer and Mrs. Clerk, felt it was
plain duty to scrape up the fare and
give Dorothy, Thelma, Ivy and Joan
a chance. If you did draw the big,
big prize-and somehow nobody did
there were a number of smaller ones.
And the overseeTs were so cookbook
ing.
Young, hard-trained, healthy, sun
bronzed, busy, the company of riders
who dashed UP and down the miles
and miles of Tarabora's canefelds all
day long, supervising the imported
Indian labor. calling over, doctoring,
settling murderous disputes, restrain
ing the tyrannies of the turbaned,
greedy "siradars"-these men, though
their salaries were small and their
ways not always ways of righteous
ness, found even more favor in the
eyes of Doris, Kathleen, Myrtle.
Betty and MAZE, than did the superior,
important men of the Office block.
And the missionary parson of the
Manchester United Churches, who
had been in Tarabora for at least
four 6. MS. quite often, in those
years of Redding's reign, told the
Tarabora public in st. Georges s
Church that they were now to declare
it, and when they did not declare
anything of the kind, went on with
his job of making Phyllis Marguerite
and Henry William one.
And the line of neat small
bungalows with front and back We
randas, whence the earliest smells of
coffee arose in the shadowy dawn, had
quite as many wrappered women
waving goodbye on the steps as had
the front, back and two-side veranda
residences later in the morning. In
deed, they had more, For it was
known in Tarabora that Head Ac-
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