Banana Fritters.

By Mollie Lett.

I HAD a Papuan cook whose vocabu lary, so far as I was concerned, con sisted of five English words and two phrases: "Where”; “yesterday”; “right oh”; “no”; and “yes”; “Yes, I know”; and “He finish.”

They are all good words, and I had no objection to them in their right place. Neither had he, whether in the right place, or wrong. But, unfortun ately for me, they conveyed no mean ing to him. They were just words. And how I hated them!

“Puri,” I said, one day. “Tea ready?”

“Where, Sinabada?” he answered.

I tried again. “You bring him tea, Puri,” I said kindly.

“Yes, Sinabada, yesterday,” was the reply.

I swallowed hard. “Puri,” I tried again, firmly. “This one tea.” I made a sign of a teapot; I brandished im aginary cups in the air; I drank, I gulped. “This one tea,” I said. “Puri, you bring him now, quick-time, schnell, vitement.”

Puri grinned. He was very good natured, and I was really rather an un usual white person. Never before had he met such a one. Quite funny, in spots.

“Yesterday, no, Sinabada,” he agreed as he left.

It was all very trying. He was in dustrious, clean and amiable, and I had hopes of training him. But those five awful words! And those phrases!

It was most unfortunate that we had no means of communication whatever.

He knew no Motuan or English except, of course, those five imperishable words.

So it was with some mutual relief that, late one afternoon, we indirectly came nearer to the truth of things— pierced the veil, so to speak. He had discovered a new phrase!

“Sinabada,” he called excitedly, as he came forward, holding a basket of Siporos (lemons) which had arrived.

“Banana Fritters! Banana Fritters!”

And he ran to the kitchen.

The result of his subsequent efforts was too much for me. He is now cut ting wood. “He finish!”

All that was left of the plantation, homestead and out buildings on "Burnsilo.” Epi, New Hebrides, after the hurricane had passed, a few months ago. These snapshots by Mr. E. Sarginson convey a very good idea of the havoc and loss with which all planters in the “hurricane belt” are always threatened.