Charlie Meets

Sir Isaac

By Bill Gill

“rpHERE’S more bull put over JL about plantation management than any other lurk I know of,” said Charley. . , I remember once (he went on) when things were looking up a bit, [ thought I’d like to know if all I’d heard about Jap women were true. To look after the place while [ was away I thought of a niece )f mine. Josie had just got married ;o a fellah with all the advantages: iducation, family, breeding and ?hat not. Everything, in fact, ex cept the wherewithal, the spondu iks, the mazuma. Meaning he was iroke.

Well, I was her rich uncle (to her say of thinking) and all they had o do was write me and ask for a ob, generous salary. OK, thinks , why not give the young couple spin? So I fixed up their passage t*om South and bye-and-bye they drived They had so much gear 'ith them that they nearly sank le coastal hooker and I had to get

all hands and the cook from the two neighbouring villages to help my own boys carry the stuff over the two hundred yards’ stretch from the beach to the bungalow T hey were pleased as Punch with the scenery, and who wouldn’t be?

The house, too, was all right excent as Josie kindly pointed out, that it was in a filthy state.

I had not noticed it much myself I turned round and cussed poor old Peter, my house-boy. He’d been with me for years and this was the first he d ever heard of it but, know mg me, he took the cussin’ philo sophically. For the next few weeks things were pretty middling on account of the smell of soap, soda and wet paint but the nephew-in law began to take over the running of the plantation. I had a pretty good team of boys, all casuals, who’d worked with me, off-and-on, all their lives. They knew the ropes; how many bags of copra they could get 0 block, and we had always rubbed along comfortably. But when the young feltow started to intro duce stream-lined efficiency and that sort of nonsense, the produc tion started to drop and the boys suddenly remembered dying relatives back home in their village, and quit.

I had to put my foot down and the young fellow didn’t like it and sulked around the verandah for a few days, whispering a lot with Josie and only favouring me with an occasional remark such as: “When are you taking that trip of yours to Japan?” or “Uncle Charley, don’t you think it’s a waste you keeping a dog and doing all the barking yourself?”

I wasn’t too happy about this state of affairs so I kept mum and pre sently the fellah started dogging my footsteps as I took my daily cruise around the plantation and he never, lost an opportunity of airing his education.

Says he, one day, with a sly look

out of the tail of his eye, “Why do all these nuts keep falling down do you suppose, Uncle?” Blind Freddie could see he was trying to take a rise out of me, so I thought Id give him a run for his money. !ye been worrying about that myself for some time now,” I tells him. Lately the nuts have all been turning brown and falling off. Must be some terrible disease that’s got into ’em.”

But he wasn’t that dense; “No,” says he, “there’s no disease; what I asked was, why do they fall down?”

I stopped and studied him real hard for a while, thinking he’d maybe been giving the Scotch a bit of a nudge. But no, he seemed sober enough. “And why wouldn’t they fall down?” I answers, “what is there to stop them?”

“Tut, tut! Uncle Charley, you don’t understand. Why don’t they hang on forever?”

“They don’t hang on forever,” I answered slowly, “on account of they fall off.”

Uncle >” says he scornfully, there’s no point in losing your rag.

Answer my question scientifically.”

“Why, dammit,” I said, getting real peeved, “everything falls off, coconuts, oranges, apples and every thing except strawberries, and they’re on the ground already. What is there so scientific about that?”

“It’s easy seen, Uncle, that you’ve never read Sir Isaac Newton and the apple. It’s the law of gravity that does it.”

I turned this over in my mind, then I says, “I’ve heard of gravita tion water works but never of gravitation coconuts —or apples for that matter.”

“It’s the law of gravitation, Uncle; the earth attracts the coconuts to it, and so they fall.”

“Listen, young fellah,” I says, “you’re getting far to deep for me!

"I’d heard about Jap women ..."

"On a man’s own verandah, mind you..."

Talking about the earth attracting coconuts. Why don’t it attract your head?” , , “Because it’s fastened on.

“And the nuts, aren’t they fastened on?” , “Uncle Charley,” he says, you re too thick-headed— you don’t under stand these scientific things. Now, for instance, if you throw your helmet into the air, why does it fall down again?”

“My poor fellah,” I replies, I m beginning to think you’re a shingle short, eh? Bats in the belfry, what?

Rats in the garret?”

“Quite,” says he, smugly, but answer my question.” I blew loudly through my nose, disdaining to reply. , “Gravitation again,” says he, smugger (if there is such a word!) than ever. “Now if you strike a ball along a billiard table, why will it roll a certain distance and then stop? Why not keep rolling in per- PC “Now what’s the strong of all this gibberish about falling nuts ana rolling balls? What gives you the idea that there’s any science in that? This Sir Isaac Newton and the apple you mention, I remember a recitation about him when I was a nipper. Wasn’t he the fellah that fired an arrow at an apple on his

grandfather’s head?”

“No no,” he cries. That was William Tell. No relation. I’m afraid you’re not very well read, Uncle.” . . , Maybe not, says I waspishly, but I can write better than you can: a cheque for instance. Tell me this, since you know so much, and it would be something really worth knowing; What is meant by money being “cheap”? Could I go to a bank and get a cheap quid note for nineteen bob? And what about fluctuation? Isn’t money always fluctuating from one pocket to an other?

And the young fellah, with all his education, couldn’t explain this to me. He agreed that a quid, which ever way you looked at it, was still a ‘There you are,” I lectures him, ■“worrying your brains into machine oil over studies of falling helmets, or coconuts, or what have you, when you could employ them nutting out some simple way of getting a pound note for less than twenty shillings.

I’m getting more disappointed m you every day.” He slunk off with his tail between his legs and was pretty quiet for a few days.

Then, one morning, he got my goat completely. You know how it is living on a plantation for years, a man gets set in his ways, up at the first hint of daylight, a planter s breakfast, then he’s ready for a few preliminary bouts with the boys sneaking back from romantic visits to the villages.

Well, this morning his nibs came - stalking out, with Josie on his hammer, the earliest appearance they’d ever made. “Uncle Charley,

says he, “Josie and I think it’s time you cut out all this hawking and spitting and other vulgar noises. We think it disgusting and besides it disturbs our rest.”

On a man’s own verandah, mind you! I was too flabbergasted to say a word. . , “And another thing,” his highness goes on, “we’d like you to take more care of your appearance and to consult us more on the running of the Estate, after all there is a certain dignity to be maintained as a Man ager among these Island people.”

Well, I’d got my breath back by this time and I can tell you I was boiling. “So!” says I, “a man cant spit off his own verandah? You’ve got a lot to learn yet about the Tropics let me tell you. And as for the dignity of management, I could walk down to that beach, board one of BP’s steamers and sail across to Africa, capture a chimpanzee, bring him back here and teach him to manage a coconut plantation in a fortnight.”

He didn’t like that I can tell you!

He turned and made off like a scalded cat and before the week was out the pair of them had packed and gone. , , , Charley sat back and chuckled at the memory. * * * “So you didn’t get your trip to Japan after all?” I asked presently.

“Oh, yes I did,” said Charley, “oi near enough. I left old Peter, the house-boy, in charge and found a: much copra made as if I’d beer there myself all the time. The onh reason I didn’t actually make Japai was the cargo of opium lamps snuff-bottles, door-knockers, sandal woods fans and ceremonial scroll I’d loaded myself down with i: Upper Lascan Row, Hongkong. An< even if my prehistoric polka excite* wide admiration on the dance floo of the ultra modern night haunt: I still had time for private pleasure aplenty.

“But I never found out if wha they say about the Japanese sheila is true.”

A new Bible House is to be bur at Port Moresby by the British an Foreign Bible Society. It will \ dedicated as a memorial to the me and women of Papua and Ne Guinea whose devotion and sacrifu saved the lives of many Australia! and Americans. The NSW secretai of the Society announced this n cently. He said an appeal for £6,5( had been launched. fl Mr. Theo (Mick) Thomas, Kokopo, New Guinea, who has bee residing for some months in Sydne left for New Zealand in Decembe and will be absent in the Southea Pacific for six or seven weeks.