I drew a deep breath of the salt air when there came to me a new and
delicious odor. It seemed to steal from a secret garden under the sea,
and I thought of mermaids plucking the blossoms of their coral arbors
for the perfuming and adornment of their golden hair. But sweeter
and heavier it floated upon the slight breeze, and I knew it for the
famed zephyr that carries to the voyager to Tahiti the scents of the
flowers of that idyllic land. It was the life vapor of the hinano,
the tiare and the frangipani exhaled by those flowers of Tahiti, to be
wafted to the sailor before he sights the scene itself, the breath of
Lorelei that spelled the sense of the voyager. No shipwrecked mariner
could have felt more poignancy in his search for a hospitable strand
than I on the plunging prow of the Noa-Noa in my quest through the
bright sunshine of that afternoon for the haven of desire. I strained
my eyes to see it, to realize the gossamer dream I had spun since
boyhood from the leaves of beloved poets.

It was shortly after three o'clock that the vision came in reality,
more marvelous, more exquisite, more unimaginable than the conception
of all my reveries--a dim shadow in the far offing, a dark speck in
the lofty clouds, a mass of towering green upon the blue water, the
fast unfoldment of emerald, pale hills and glittering reef. Nearer as
sailed our ship, the panorama was lovelier. It was the culmination of
enchantment, the fulfilment of the wildest fantasy of wondrous color,
strange form, and lavish adornment.

The island rose in changing shape from the soft Pacific sea, here sheer
and challenging, there sloping gently from mountain height to ocean
sheen; different all about, altering with hiding sun or shifting view
its magic mold, with moods as varied as the wind, but ever lovely,
alluring, new.