Travel Reference
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er and went through the buffing process. I was pleased with the resulting bracelet. But it
was still lacking something. Suddenly I remembered my palm tree and mermaid scenes that
I had practiced drawing. I drew a scene on the bracelet, and, to finish it, I painstakingly
scribed in the drawing with a sharp scribe. It took quite a while to do this. I buffed it up
again and then took some enamel paint I had in my locker and filled in the scrimshawed
scribe drawing, allowing the paint to dry thoroughly before I buffed off the excess.
The results were delightful: a dark, shiny, coconut bracelet with a drawing of a tall coconut
tree with a sexy mermaid sitting beneath on its bent bole in different shades of paint. I ad-
ded the words FIJI next to it, and a little industry was born. I showed Cheri my work, and
she was thrilled with it. I promptly gave her my first one. “Oh mon amie, you are so sweet!”
she said, tweaking both my ears between her shapely fingers.
The following morning I got a terrible fright when I saw Cheri's husband rowing steadily
over to my boat. “Oh Christ, here's trouble,” I said to Gavin, looking at the approaching
figure bent to his oars. With my heart in my mouth, I stammered a good morning to him
and waited for him to start ranting and raving like the jealous husband I thought he was.
Instead he very graciously told me he had seen my bracelet that I had given his wife. Being
a manufacturing jeweler he suggested that I make a few and come by his workshop where I
could use his buffing machine to polish the artifacts up. You could have knocked me down
with a feather. I thanked him profusely and told him I would make up a bunch and come
by when I had completed them. He even suggested that I leave one or two in his showcase.
“You never know, we may chust sell one or two, ja?” he said in his thick Swiss accent.
The next week saw a hive of activity on-board Déjà vu. Even Gavin was roped into collect-
ing small coconut shells. “They have to be small to fit on ladies wrists,” I explained.
“Gaanderlidge!” was his answer, a slight variation of “Gaanders,” which I knew to mean
that he was secretly pleased with this new idea. I believe he felt a little left out of my deal
with Cheri and again when her husband had encouraged me to use his buffing wheel at the
workshop.
We knocked out about thirty of these bracelets, and I rowed ashore a week later to Cheri's
husband's workshop. If I had been surprised at his lack of jealousy towards his wife, I now
saw the other side of the coin. Bernard, as it turned out, had several very beautiful shop
assistants working for him. They were all dark skinned Fijian beauties, similar in looks to
the two sweet girls that had befriended us in the bay near Snake Island. While I was bent
over the buffing wheel polishing my bracelets, I kept an eye on a particularly beautiful
young girl whose smile could have melted the South Pole. She had no particular job, un-
like the others who served the customers out in the front of the store. She made coffee and
cleaned up around Bernard when he worked at his bench. She did odd errands; I believe
