The Tia Kau. 
3 1 
to lift, the steely ocean gleam pains the eye like 
a vast sheet of molten lead, and the white stretch 
of sand above high-water mark in front of the 
native village seems to throb and quiver and 
waver to and fro ; the mat coverings of the 
long row of slender canoes further down crackle 
and warp and swell upward. 
Presently the one white trader on the little 
island comes to the doorway of his house and 
looks out. Not a living thing to be seen, 
except, far out beyond the reef, where the huge 
bodies of two blackfish lie motionless upon the 
water, sunning themselves; and just above his 
head, and sitting on its perch, a tame frigate- 
bird, whose fierce eye looks upward and out¬ 
ward at the blazing sun. 
“ What a terror of a day ! ” mutters the trader 
to himself, as he drinks his morning coffee, and 
then lazily sinks into a cane lounge on his 
verandah. He, too, will go to sleep until the 
breeze springs up, or some inconsiderate 
customer comes to buy tobacco, or tell him 
the local gossip. 
In and about the village—which is a little 
further back from the trader’s house — the 
silence of the morning heat reigns supreme. 
