but some of the prettiest girls, and one of the handsomest women I ever saw, were Gilbertines.  Butaritari, being the commercial centre of the group, is Europeanised; the coloured sacque or the white shift are common wear, the latter for the evening; the trade hat, loaded with flowers, fruit, and ribbons, is unfortunately not unknown; and the characteristic female dress of the Gilberts no longer universal.  The ridi is its name:  a cutty petticoat or fringe of the smoked fibre of cocoa-nut leaf, not unlike tarry string:  the lower edge not reaching the mid-thigh, the upper adjusted so low upon the haunches that it seems to cling by accident.  A sneeze, you think, and the lady must surely be left destitute.  ’The perilous, hairbreadth ridi’ was our word for it; and in the conflict that rages over women’s dress it has the misfortune to please neither side, the prudish condemning it as insufficient, the more frivolous finding it unlovely in itself.  Yet if a pretty Gilbertine would look her best, that must be her costume.  In that and naked otherwise, she moves with an incomparable liberty and grace and life, that marks the poetry of Micronesia.  Bundle her in a gown, the charm is fled, and she wriggles like an Englishwoman.

Towards dusk the passers-by became more gorgeous.  The men broke out in all the colours of the rainbow—­or at least of the trade-room,—­and both men and women began to be adorned and scented with new flowers.  A small white blossom is the favourite, sometimes sown singly in a woman’s hair like little stars, now composed in a thick wreath.  With the night, the crowd sometimes thickened in the road, and the padding and brushing of bare feet became continuous; the promenades mostly grave, the silence only interrupted by some giggling and scampering of girls; even the children quiet.  At nine, bed-time struck on a bell from the cathedral, and the life of the town ceased.  At four the next morning the signal is repeated in the darkness, and the innocent prisoners set free; but for seven hours all must lie—­I was about to say within doors, of a place where doors, and even walls, are an exception—­housed, at least, under their airy roofs and clustered in the tents of the mosquito-nets.  Suppose a necessary errand to occur, suppose it imperative to send abroad, the messenger must then go openly, advertising himself to the police with a huge brand of cocoa-nut, which flares from house to house like a moving bonfire.  Only the police themselves go darkling, and grope in the night for misdemeanants.  I used to hate their treacherous presence; their captain in particular, a crafty old man in white, lurked nightly about my premises till I could have found it in my heart to beat him.  But the rogue was privileged.