My God! there was bottle in yard
all broken. Admiral French fleet send band; come hisself with all his
officer'. Five o'clock mornin'-time still dance and drink. Bigges'
time T'ytee. You not walk barefoot long time 'count broken glass
everywhere."

I had heard that delicious incident before, but it never lost savor.

After dinner and a prolonged session upon the camphor-wood chest to
hear Lovaina's chatter, I came leisurely to the Annexe along the shore
of the lagoon. It was after midnight, and the heavens sang with stars
as the ripe moon dipped into the western sea.

The tropics only know the fullness of the firmament, the myriad of suns
and planets, the brilliancy of the constellations, and the overpowering
revelation of the infinite above. In less fervent latitudes one can
never feel the bigness of the vault on high, nor sense the intimacy
one had here with the worlds that spin in the measureless ether.

Two lofty-sparred ships but newly from the California coast swung at
moorings within a dozen feet of the grass that borders the coral banks,
and on their decks, under the light of lamps, American sailors lifted a
shanty of the rolling Mississippi. I remembered when I had first heard
it. I was a boy, and had stolen away on a bark, the Julia Rollins,
bound for Rio, and as we hauled in the line let go by the tow-boat,
a seaman raised the bowline song. To me, with "Two Years Before the
Mast" and Clark Russell's galley yarns churning in my mind, it was
sweeter far than ever siren voiced to lure her victims to their death,
and rough and tarry as was the shanty-man, Caruso had never seemed
to me such a glorious figure.

This fascination of the sea and of its border had never left me,
though I had passed years on ships and nearly all my life within sound
of the surf. It is as strong as ever, holding me thrall in the sight
of its waters and its freights, and unhappy when denied them. Best
of all literature I love the stories of old ocean, and glad am I

That such as have no pleasure
For to praise the Lord by measure,
They may enter into galleons and serve him on the sea.

In Tahiti the sea was very near and meant much. One felt toward it
as must the mountaineer who lives in the shadow of the Matterhorn;
it was always part of one's thoughts, for all men and things came
and went by it, and the great world lay beyond it.

But dear or near as the sea might be to such a man as I, a mere
traveler upon it t