two youngsters
amidships, the father took the post of honour as _tautai_ or steersman,
and with a chuckle of satisfaction from the boys, off we went in the
wake of about thirty other canoes.

Oh, the delight of urging a light canoe over the glassy water of an
island lagoon, and watching the changing colours and strange, grotesque
shapes of the coral trees and plants of the garden beneath as they
vanish swiftly astern, and the quick _chip, chip_ of the flashing
paddles sends the whirling, noisy eddies to right and left, and frights
the lazy, many-hued rock-fish into the darker depths beneath! On, on,
till the half mile or more of shallow water which covers the inner reef
is passed, and then suddenly you shoot over the top of the submarine
wall, into deepest, loveliest blue, full thirty fathoms deep, and as
calm and quiet as an infant sleeping on its mother's bosom, though
perhaps not a quarter of a mile away on either hand the long rollers of
the Pacific are bellowing and thundering on the grim black shelves of
the weather coast.

So it was on this morning, but with added delights and beauties; as
instead of striking straight across the lagoon to our rendezvous we had
to skirt the beaches of a chain of thickly wooded islets, which gave
forth a sweet smell, mingled with the odours of _nono_ blossoms; for
during the night rain had fallen after a long month of dry weather, and
Nature was breathing with joy. High overhead there floated some
snow-white tropic birds--those gentle, ethereal creatures which, to the
toil-spent seaman who watches their mysterious poise in illimitable
space, seem to denote the greater Mystery and Rest that lieth beyond all
things; and lower down, and sweeping swiftly to and fro with steady,
outspread wing and long, forked tail, the fierce-eyed, savage frigate
birds scanned the surface of the water in search of prey, and then
finding it not, rose without apparent motion to the cloudless canopy of
blue and became as but tiny black specks--and then, _swish_! and the
tiny black specks which but a minute ago were high in heaven are
flashing by your cheeks with a weird, whistling sound like winged
spectres. You look for them. They are gone. Already they are a thousand
feet overhead. Five of them. And all five are as motionless as if they,
with their wide, outspread wings, had never moved from their present
position for a thousand years.

"Chip, chip," and "chunk, chunk," go our paddles as we now head