OF THE SOUTH SEAS 21 



that day eighteen hundred miles from Tahiti and the 

 same distance from San Francisco, while north and 

 west twelve hundred miles lay Hawaii. Not nearer 

 than there, four hundred leagues away, was succor if 

 our vessel failed. It was the dead center of the sea. 

 I glanced at the chart and noted the spot: Latitude 

 10° N.; Longitude 137° W. The great god Ra of the 

 Polynesians had climbed above the dizzy edge of the 

 whirling earth, and was making his gorgeous course 

 into the higher heavens. The ocean was a glittering 

 blue, an intense, brilliant azure, level save for the slight 

 swaying of the surface, which every little space showed 

 a flag of white. The evaporation caused by the blazing 

 sun of these tropics made the water a deeper blue than 

 in cooler latitudes, as in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans 

 the greens are almost as vivid as the blues about the 

 line. 



I watched the thousand flying-fishes' fast leaps 

 through the air, and caught gleams of the swift bonitos 

 whose pursuit made birds of their little brothers. Then, 

 a few miles off, I saw the first vessel that had come to 

 our eyes since we had sunk the headlands of California 

 more than a week before. She was a great sailing ship, 

 under a cloud of snowy canvas, one of the caste of clip- 

 pers that fast fades under the pall of smoke, and, from 

 her route, bound for the Pacific Coast from Australia. 

 The captain of the Noa-Noa came and stood beside me 

 as we made her out more plainly, and fetching the 

 glasses, he glanced at her, started, and said in some 

 surprise : 



"She 's signaling us she wants to send a boat to us. 

 That 's the first time in thirty years in this line. I have 



