the moon shaped like an eye, a brilliant, glowing, wondrous orb, more
intensely golden for its contrast with the ominous blackness of the
serpentine cloud. I felt that I had found the origin of the Oriental
fable. Some minutes the illusion held, and then the cloud lowered,
and the moon, alone against a pale-blue background, the horizon a
mass of scudding draperies of pearly hue, lit the ocean between the
ship and the edge of the world in a tremulous and mellow gilded path.

There was dancing on the boat-deck, the Lydian measures of the
Hawaiian love-songs, those passionate melodies in which Polynesian
pearls have been strung on European filaments, filling the balmy air
with quivering notes of desire, and causing dancers to hold closer
their partners. The Occident seemed very far away; even older people
felt the charm of clime that had come upon them, and laughter rang
as stories ran about the group in the reclining-chairs.

The captain, though grim from a gripping religion that had squeezed
all joy from his scripture-haunted soul, added an anecdote to the
entertainment.

"Passing from Fiji to Samoa," he said, "I had to leave the mail at
Niuafou, in the Tongan Islands. It is a tiny isle, three miles long by
as wide, an old crater in which is a lagoon, hot springs, and every
sign of the devastation of many eruptions. The mail for Niuafou was
often only a single letter and a few newspapers. We sealed them in a
tin can, and when we met the postmaster at sea, we threw it over. He
would be three miles out, swimming, with a small log under arm for
support, and often he might be in company with thirty or forty of
his tribe, who, with only the same slight aids to keeping afloat,
would be fishing leisurely. They carried their tackle and their catch