islands; I know the tedium of
their undistinguished days; I know the burden of their diet. With
whatever envy we may have looked from the deck on these green coverts,
it was with a tenfold greater that Mr. Salmon and his comrades saw us
steer, in our trim ship, to seaward.

The night fell lovely in the extreme. After the moon went down, the
heaven was a thing to wonder at for stars. And as I lay in the cockpit
and looked upon the steersman I was haunted by Emerson's verses:

"And the lone seaman all the night
Sails astonished among stars."

By this glittering and imperfect brightness, about four bells in the
first watch we made our third atoll, Raraka. The low line of the isle
lay straight along the sky; so that I was at first reminded of a
towpath, and we seemed to be mounting some engineered and navigable
stream. Presently a red star appeared, about the height and brightness
of a danger signal, and with that my simile was changed; we seemed
rather to skirt the embankment of a railway, and the eye began to look
instinctively for the telegraph-posts, and the ear to expect the coming
of a train. Here and there, but rarely, faint tree-tops broke the level.
And the sound of the surf accompanied us, now in a drowsy monotone, now
with a menacing swing.

The isle lay nearly east and west, barring our advance on Fakarava. We
must, therefore, hug the coast until we gained the western end, where,
through a passage eight miles wide, we might sail southward between
Raraka and the next isle, Kauehi. We had the wind free, a lightish air;
but clouds of an inky blackness were beginning to arise, and at times
it lightened--without thunder. Something, I know not what, continually
set us up upon the island. We lay more and more to the nor'ard; and you
would have thought the shore copied our manoeuvre and outsailed us.
Once and twice Raraka headed us again--again, in the sea fashion, the
quite innocent steersman was abused--and again the _Casco_ kept away.
Had I been called on, with no more light than that of our experience, to
draw the configuration of that island, I should have shown a series of
bow-window promontories, each overlapping the other to the nor'ard, and
the trend of the land from the south-east to the north-west, and behold,
on the chart it lay near east and west in a straight line.

We had but just repeated our manoeuvre and kept away--for not more
than five minutes the railway embankment had been lost to view a