12 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



mid-day alone was ungrateful, almost unbearable, exposed to 

 the sun, as we were, without awning or protection ; the evening 

 sunsets were scenes to be remembered for a lifetime. The tall 

 cones of Sibissie and Krakatoa rose dark purple out of an un- 

 ruffled golden sea, which stretched away to the south-west, where 

 the sun went down ; over the horizon grey fleecy clouds lay in 

 banks and streaks, above them pale blue lanes of sky, alternating 

 with orange bands, which higher up gave place to an expanse 

 of red stretching round the whole heavens. Gradually as the 

 sun retreated deeper and deeper, the sky became a marvellous 

 . golden curtain, in front of which the grey clouds coiled them- 

 selves into weird forms before dissolving into space, taking 

 with them our last hope that they might contain a breeze, and 

 leaving us at rest on the placid water, over which shoals of 

 water-bugs (of the genus Halobaies probably) glided, covering 

 its surface with circles like gentle rain-drop rings ; there was 

 not a sound to break the silence save the plunge of a porpoise 

 or the fluck of the fishes in quest of their evening meal. 

 Perhaps these rich after-glows were due to the Kaba eruption 

 then going on in Mid-Sumatra. 



One day, we passed a large log in the sea floating in the 

 current, to which numerous little crabs were clinging, on their 

 way, perhaps, to colonise some new and distant shore. 



On the afternoon of the sixteenth day of weary beating from 

 Anjer, a pure white tern suddenly appeared, and, circling about 

 the vessel, produced quite a flutter of excitement. It was the 

 lovely Gygis Candida, one of the Keeling Island birds, which 

 our native boatswain declared never went far from home, and 

 that we must, therefore, be near our destination. 



Several of the sailors ran aloft, and in a few minutes 

 descried to the northward the crowns of the higher cocoa- 

 nut palms on the southern islands. We straightway changed 

 our course ; for our skipper had evidently miscalculated our 

 noon position, and, but for this timely pilot, would have sailed 

 past in the. night. At sundown the islands appeared from the 

 deck as a dark uneven line, rising little above the horizon ; at 

 ten o'clock we cautiously sailed in to the anchorage in the 

 lagoon, lighted through by the phosphorescence from shoals of 

 large fishes, which darted like rockets from below our keel. 



The scene that met my eyes next morning was a curious 



