Want Any Trochus

Moonbeams flit on wavelets roun these lovely tropic isles, With their coral reefs extending fc miles and miles and miles, And every reef is weighted dow. with tons of trochus shell Just asking me to gather it and the to go and sell.

There are fortunes going beggin around these tropic seas; And then back to the city, to wondrous life of ease — Well that’s what someone told u and that’s what we believed.

But after two years’ yakker we kna we were deceived.

We’ve slept on stinking trochus an on lousy flyblown wrecks, With rotten wormy bottoms an patched-up leaky decks, And the rain comes down in torrent and washes us from bed— We’re not sure sometimes if it’s ’ or trochus that is dead.

We’ve lost a brand-new dinghy mile out from the shore With its day’s full haul of divin a hundredweight or more.

It was smashed to little pieces a savage northwest squall— For a while it had us asking if we lose our boat and all.

We are out of tea and sugar, ai lived for months on fish, And a fresh-cooked meal of ste;: and eggs is our most ardent wis We’re thinking of insuring even thing that we have got, Then sink it all together—let tJ trochus have the lot!

Milne Bay Peasant

il Miss Salamasina Malietoa repr sented Western Samoa in Januai at the annual conference of ti Dominion Council of the Girls’ La.

Brigade, held at Christchurch, N2 1