Would I, too, "go native"? Become enamored of those simple, primitive
places and ways, and want to keep going westward? Would I, too, fish
to be honored for my string? Would I go to the Dangerous Archipelago,
those mystic atolls that sent to the Empress Eugénie that magnificent
necklace of pearls she wore at the great ball at the Tuileries when
the foolish Napoleon made up his mind to emulate his great namesake
and make war? Would I there see those divers who are said to surpass
all the mermen of legend in the depths they go in their coral-studded
lagoons in search of the jewels that hide in gold-lipped shells? Was it
for me to wander among those fabulous coral isles flung for a thousand
miles upon the sapphire sea, like wreaths of lilies upon a magic lake?

The doldrums brought rain before the southeast wind came to urge us
faster on our course and to clear the skies. Now we were in the deep
tropics, five or six hundred miles farther south than Honolulu, and
plunging toward the imaginary circle which is the magic ring of the
men who steer ships in all oceans. Our breeze was that they pray for
when the wind alone must drive the towering trees of canvas toward
Australia from America.

The breeze held on while games of the formal tournaments progressed,
and prizes were won by the young and the spry.

One night I came on deck when the moon had risen an hour, and saw as
strange and beautiful a sight as ever made me sigh for the lack of
numbers in my soul. A huge, long, black cloud hung pendent from midway
in the sky, with its lower part resting on the sea. It was for all the
world of marvels like a great dragon, shaped rudely to a semblance of
the beast of the Apocalypse, and with its head lifted into the ether,
so that it was framed against the heavens. The moon was in its mouth;