CHAPTER II

A real discovery. Polynesia analyzed. The astounding nature of the
Filberts. Their curious sound, and its reason. We make a landing. Our
first glimpse of the natives. The value of vaudeville.


There is nothing better, after a hurricane, than six hours' sleep. It
was high noon when we were awakened by William Henry Thomas and the
odor of coffee, which drew us to the quarter-deck. There, for the first
time, we were able to make an accurate survey of our surroundings and
realize the magnitude and importance of what had befallen us. While
we slept Captain Triplett had warped the denuded Kawa through
a labyrinth of coral and we now lay peacefully at anchor with the
island lying close in-board.

Its appearance, to put it mildly, was astonishing. Let me remind the
reader that for the previous four months we had been prowling through
the Southern Pacific meeting everywhere with disappointment and
disillusionment. We had inspected every island in every group noted
on every map from Mercator to Rand-McNally without finding any variation
in type from, "A," the low lying coral-atoll of the well-known broken
doughnut formation, to, "B," the high-browed, mansard design popularized
by F. O'Brien. [Footnote: This is the type "E". of Melville's overrated
classification--_Ed._] In a few of the outlying suburbs of
Melanesia and the lower half of Amnesia, we had found a few designs
which showed sketchy promise of originality: coral reefs in quaint