364 Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
eyes and black, glossy hair falling about their 
shoulders of bronze, half-nude male and female 
figures come forth from every house of thatch 
and walk slowly down towards the reef for 
their morning bathe. As they pass the trader’s 
dwelling—a rambling, untidy-looking place, 
with doors and windows opened wide—the 
Dapalagi stands upon his verandah, smoking 
his morning pipe and waiting for his coffee. 
They all, men and women, give him kindly 
greeting or exchange some merry jest. Behind 
their elders, in noisy groups of eight or ten, 
come the village children, big-eyed laughter- 
loving boys and girls together, pushing and 
jostling against each other’s all but naked red- 
brown figures; and then as their voices die 
away in the distance, silence falls again. Away 
out beyond the reef the long ocean swell is 
rippling to the morning breeze ; flocks of terns 
and snow-white gulls fly to and fro, watching 
with eager, beady eyes for the first signs of the 
shoals of tiny fish on which they prey from 
dawn till dark. Back from the village the grey 
pigeons and gay-hued manutagi (the ringdove 
of Polynesia) hush their crooning notes as they 
see beneath them the figures of men carrying 
