202 MYSTIC ISLES 



gaudy tidies, an engraving of the execution of Nathan 

 Hale, and a toilet-table full of fancy notions. Evoa 

 was always barefooted, but Afa, on steamer days and 

 when going to the cinematogi-aph, appeared in immacu- 

 late white and with canvas shoes. Otherwise he wore 

 only a fold of cloth about the loins, the real garment of 

 the Tahitian, and the right one for that climate. 



Again on my balcony, I saw the sun had passed the 

 crown of the Diadem and was slanting hotly toward 

 Papeete. Moorea was emerging from darkness, its val- 

 leys a deep brown, and the tops of the serried moun- 

 tains becoming green. 



Along the reef, outside, a schooner, two-masted, was 

 making for the harbor. She was very graceful, and as 

 she entered the lagoon through the passage in the bar- 

 rier I was struck by her Hues, slender, swelling, and 

 feminine. She passed within a few hundred feet of me, 

 and I saw that she was the Marara, the Flying-Fish. 



I did not know it then, but I was to go on that little 

 vessel to the blazing atolls of the Dangerous Archipel- 

 ago, and to see stranger and more fascinating sights 

 than I had dreamed of on the Noa-Noa during my pas- 

 sage to Tahiti. 



I dragged my canoe to the edge of the quai des Sub- 

 sistances, so-called because of the naval depot. The 

 craft was dubbed out of a breadfruit-tree trunk, and 

 had an outrigger of purau wood, a natural crooked arm, 

 with a small limb laced to it. The canoe was steady 

 enough in such smooth water, and I paddled off to Motu 

 Uta. That islet is a rock of coral upon which soil had 

 been placed unknown years before, and which produced 

 fruits and flowers in abundance under the hand of the 



