hardwood planks don't make an ideal resting place. Besides, the rays of
sun followed the strip of shadow around the pile, and each time I
slipped into a doze I would be pricked into wakefulness. At last,
maddened by the biting rays, I collected half a dozen copra bags,
splintered a piece of _kauri_ pine, and after rigging up one bag as an
awning, I spread the others on the planks and fell asleep.

But another disturbing element awakened me from a short slumber. From
the sea end of the deserted wharf came a big, greasy Maori and a
fuzzy-headed Fijian, and their words went out into the silence like
sound projectiles. The Maori had such a high-pitched voice that I
thought, as I rolled over restlessly, he would only have to raise it a
little to make them hear him up in Sydney, eighteen hundred miles away.
It was one of those voices that fairly cavort over big distances, and I
buried my head in the shell as the pair came closer.

It was useless to attempt to shut out that voice. I stuffed a piece of
bag into the ear that wasn't jammed against the pearl shell, but the
noise of that fool talking fairly sizzled in my brain. Finally I gave up
all hopes of trying to sleep till the pair had left the wharf, and I lay
upon my back as they came slowly up the sun-bitten structure.

It was only when I gave up all thoughts of sleep that I recognized that
the Maori was talking English. Up to that moment I thought the pair were
arguing in some unfamiliar tongue, but suddenly their conversation
gripped me, and I strained my ears to listen.

"There's the white waterfall," chanted the Maori.

"Yes, the white waterfall," repeated the Fijian.