of the horizon, the foliage brightened with his beams. I sprang
from my bed, washed my hands and face, and hastened to the fare umu,
the kitchen in a grove of pandanus trees, a few steps away. There
from a pile of cocoanut husks and bits of jetsam I selected fuel,
which I placed between a group of coral rocks on which were several
iron bars. I lit the fire, and put into a pot three tablespoonfuls
of finely ground coffee and two cups of fresh water. The pot was a
percolator, and beside it I placed a frying-pan, and in it sliced
bananas and a lump of tinned butter from New Zealand. Leaving these
inanimate things to react under the dissolving effect of the blaze,
I ran to the beach, where I watched the sunrise. There recurred to me
the mornings and evenings in the Orient when I had seen the Parsees,
the fire-worshippers of India, offer their devotions, standing or
kneeling on their rugs on the seashore. I, too, raised my hands
in silent admiration of the mother of all life. Then I observed
about me the hurry and scurry of the dwellers on the sands and in
the water. Small hermit-crabs in shells many sizes too big for them
toddled about, land-crabs rushed frantically and awkwardly for their
holes, and Portuguese men-of-war sailed by the coast, luffing to avoid
casting up on the beach. A brief period of observation, and I dashed
back to the fare umu, and trimmed the fire. When cooked, I brought
my food to my house, where I had a low table like a Japanese zen,
and with rolls from the Chinese store I made my first meal, adding
oranges, papayas and pineapple.

From the doorway, for all I encompassed in my view, I might have
been the sole human on this island. I could look to the reef and far
across the lagoon to Hitiaa or down the beach, but from that spot no
other house was in sight. If I went around the house, I was almost on
the Broadway of Tautira, the home of Ori-a-Ori before me, and a coral
church close to it, with other buildings and groves toward the mango
copse of T'yonni. On the bushes huge nets were drying, and canoes were
drawn up into the purau and pandanus clumps. As the day advanced,
the artless incidents of the settlement aroused my interest. I saw
about me scenes and affairs which had caused a famous poet after a
week or two in this very lieu to write:

Here found I all I had forecast:
The long roll of the sapphire sea
That keeps the land's virginity;
The stalwart giants of the wood
La