perhaps not a quarter of a mile away on either hand the long rollers of
the Pacific are bellowing and thundering on the grim black shelves of
the weather coast.

So it was on this morning, but with added delights and beauties; as
instead of striking straight across the lagoon to our rendezvous we had
to skirt the beaches of a chain of thickly wooded islets, which gave
forth a sweet smell, mingled with the odours of _nono_ blossoms; for
during the night rain had fallen after a long month of dry weather, and
Nature was breathing with joy. High overhead there floated some
snow-white tropic birds--those gentle, ethereal creatures which, to the
toil-spent seaman who watches their mysterious poise in illimitable
space, seem to denote the greater Mystery and Rest that lieth beyond all
things; and lower down, and sweeping swiftly to and fro with steady,
outspread wing and long, forked tail, the fierce-eyed, savage frigate
birds scanned the surface of the water in search of prey, and then
finding it not, rose without apparent motion to the cloudless canopy of
blue and became as but tiny black specks--and then, _swish_! and the
tiny black specks which but a minute ago were high in heaven are
flashing by your cheeks with a weird, whistling sound like winged
spectres. You look for them. They are gone. Already they are a thousand
feet overhead. Five of them. And all five are as motionless as if they,
with their wide, outspread wings, had never moved from their present
position for a thousand years.

"Chip, chip," and "chunk, chunk," go our paddles as we now head eastward
towards the rising sun in whose resplendent rays the tufted palms of the
two islets stand clearly out, silhouetted against the sea rim beyond.
Now and again we hear, as from a long, long distance, the echoes of the
voices of the people in the canoes ahead; a soft white mist began to