OF THE SOUTH SEAS 163 



Pincher, "because if she 's still afloat, she ain't likely to 

 get in the track of any bloody steamer. I 've heard of 

 those derelic's wanderin' roun' a bloody lifetime, espe- 

 cially if they 're loaded with lumber. They end up 

 usually on some reef." 



This casual conversation was the prelude to the 

 strangest coincidence of my life. When I awoke the 

 next morning, I found that the big sea had not come 

 and that the sun was shining. My head full of the 

 romance of wrecks and piracy, I climbed the hill behind 

 the Tiare Hotel to the signal station. There I ex- 

 amined the semaphore, which showed a great white ball 

 when the mail-steamships appeared, and other symbols 

 for the arrivals of different kinds of craft, men-of-war, 

 barks, and schooners. There was a cozy house for the 

 lookout and his family, and, as everywhere in Tahiti, 

 a garden of flowers and fruit-trees. I could see Point 

 Venus to the right, with its lighthouse, and the bare 

 tops of the masts of the ships at the quays. Gray and 

 red roofs of houses peeped from the foliage below, and a 

 red spire of a church stood up high. 



The storms had ceased in the few hours since dawn, 

 and the sun was high and brilliant. Moorea, four 

 leagues away, loomed like a mammoth battle-ship, sable 

 and grim, her turrets in the lowering clouds on the hori- 

 zon, her anchors a thousand fathoms deep. The sun 

 was drinking water through luminous pipes. The har- 

 bor was a gleaming surface, and the reef from this 

 height was a rainbow of color. All hues were in the 

 water, emerald and turquoise, palest blue and gold. I 

 sat down and closed my eyes to recall old Walt's lines 

 of beauty about the 



