The islands lay before us in echelon formation. The one in our immediate
foreground was typical of the others. Its ground-floor plan was that
of a circle of beach and palm enclosing an inner sea from the center
of which rose an elaborate mountain to a sheer height of two thousand,
perhaps ten thousand, feet. The general effect was that of a pastry
masterpiece on a gigantic scale. [Footnote: Oddly enough the scene
struck me as strangely familiar but it was not until weeks afterward
that I recalled its prototype in the memory of a decoration worn by
General Grosdenovitch, Minister very-extraordinary to America from
Montenegro just before the little mountain kingdom blew up with a faint
pop and became absorbed by Jugo-Slovakia (sic).] We could only stare
in open-mouthed amazement, thrilled with the thought that we were
actually discoverers. A gorgeous feature of our find, in addition to
its satisfactory shape, was its color. Sand and vegetation were of the
conventional hues, but where the flanks of the rock rose from the
enclosed pool we observed that they were of the pure elementary colors,
red, blue and yellow, fresh and untarnished as in the latest masterpiece
from the brush of the Master of All Painters. Here before our eyes was
an unspoiled sample of what the world must have looked like on
varnishing day.

Swank, who is ultra-modern in his tendencies, was in ecstasies over
the naive simplicity of the color scheme. "Look at that red!" he
shouted. "Look at that blue!! Look at that yaller!!!" He dove below
and I heard rattling of tubes and brushes that told me he was about
to commit landscape. This time I knew he couldn't possibly make the
colors too violent.

Fringing the exquisitely tinted coral strand were outlying reefs,
alternately concave and convex, which gave the shore edge a scalloped,