A Noble Sea Game . 
1 5 I 
raced some scores of young children ranging 
from six years of age to ten, pushing and 
jostling each other in their eagerness to be first 
on the scene. Although the sun was hot 
already, the breeze was cool and blew strongly 
in our faces when we emerged from the narrow 
leafy track out upon the open strand. Then 
with much shouting and laughing, and playful 
thumping of brown backs and shoulders, Timi, 
the master of ceremonies for the occasion, mar¬ 
shalled us all in line and then gave the word 
to go, and with a merry shout, mingled with 
quavering feminine squeaks, away we sprang 
into the sea, each one pushing his or her surf¬ 
board in front, or shooting it out ahead, and 
trying to reach the reef before any one else. 
And now the slight regard for the conven¬ 
tionalities that had been maintained during the 
walk from the village vanished, and the fun 
began—ducking and other aquatic horseplay, 
hair-pulling, seizing of surf-boards and throw¬ 
ing them back shorewards, and wrestling 
matches between the foremost swimmers. The 
papalagi (white man), swimming between the 
boy Toria and a short, square-built native 
named Temana, had succeeded in keeping well 
