174 days ago.

"There'll be no salvage on her," said Captain Pincher, "because
if she's still afloat, she ain't likely to get in the track of
any bloody steamer. I've heard of those derelic's wanderin' roun'
a bloody lifetime, especially if they're loaded with lumber. They
end up usually on some reef."

This casual conversation was the prelude to the strangest coincidence
of my life. When I awoke the next morning, I found that the big
sea had not come and that the sun was shining. My head full of
the romance of wrecks and piracy, I climbed the hill behind the
Tiare Hotel to the signal station. There I examined the semaphore,
which showed a great white ball when the mail-steamships appeared,
and other symbols for the arrivals of different kinds of craft,
men-of-war, barks, and schooners. There was a cozy house for the
lookout and his family, and, as everywhere in Tahiti, a garden of
flowers and fruit-trees. I could see Point Venus to the right, with
its lighthouse, and the bare tops of the masts of the ships at the
quays. Gray and red roofs of houses peeped from the foliage below,
and a red spire of a church stood up high.

The storms had ceased in the few hours since dawn, and the sun was
high and brilliant. Moorea, four leagues away, loomed like a mammoth
battle-ship, sable and grim, her turrets in the lowering clouds on the
horizon, her anchors a thousand fathoms deep. The sun was drinking
water through luminous pipes. The harbor was a gleaming surface,
and the reef from this height was a rainbow of color. All hues were
in the water, emerald and turquoise, palest blue and gold. I sat down
and closed my eyes to recall old Walt's lines of beauty about the