dchoppers were at work far off in its depths; and a
constant insane chattering sound, as though mad children, hidden all
about him, were laughing at him. Dusk brought from their coverts the
flying foxes, to utter curious notes as they sailed through the
gloaming, and occasionally sharp squeaks as of mortal agony or intense
gratification--he couldn't make up his mind which. After nightfall if he
flung a burning cigar stump out upon the sand he could see it moving off
in the darkness apparently under its own motive power. But the truth was
that a land crab, with an unsolvable mania for playing the role of
torchbearer, would be scuttling away with the stub in one of its claws.

The forest sheltered no dangerous beasts and no venomous reptiles but in
it were stinging nettles the touch of which was like fire to a sensitive
white skin. Also, the waters of the lagoon were free from man-eaters,
but wading close to shore one was almost sure to bark one's shanks on
the poisoned coral, making sores that refused to heal. Against the
river, which flowed down out of the interior to the sea, Pratt likewise
bore a grudge, because it was in the river that a brown woman washed his
clothes on the stones, returning them with the buttons pounded off; but
for every missing button there was sure to be a bright yellow,
semi-indelible stain, where the laundress had spread the garments to dry
upon a wild berry bush.

Every two months the steamer came. Then the white population of the
station doubled and trebled itself. Traders and storekeepers came by
canoe from outlying islands or from remote stations on the farther side
of his own island, for Good Friday Island had but one port of entry and
this was it. Beachcombers who had been adopted into villages in the
interior sauntered in over jungle trails. Many of them were deserters
from whalers or from naval vessels; nearly all were handsome chaps in an
animal sort of way.

For this common sharing of a common comeliness among them there was a
reason. In a land where physical perfection literally is worshipped,
good-looking men, brawny and broad, are surest of winning an asylum and
wives and tribal equality. To Pratt it seems to have been a source of
wonderment that almost without exception they were blue-eyed and
light-haired; he could understand of course why their skins, once fair
and white, had changed to the colour of well-tanned calfskin. The sun
beating upon their naked bodies had done that.