, and the shore and sea lay
bright and clear under a myriad-starred sky of deepest blue; the white
line of surf tumbling on the barrier reef a mile away seemed almost
within stone-throw. A gentle breeze swayed the fronds of the coco-palms
above us, and already the countless thousands of sea birds, whose
"rookery" was on two small islets within the reef and near the village,
were awake, and filling the air with their clamour as they, like us,
prepared to start off for their day's fishing.

Our party consisted of--

(1) Nalik, his wife and five dogs.

(2) Three young women, each with several dogs.

(3) Old Sru, chief of the district, with numerous dogs.

(4) Two boys and three girls, who carried baskets of food, crayfish
nets, boar-spears, &c. Large number of dogs, male and female.

(5) The white man, to whom, as soon as he appeared, the whole of the
dogs immediately attached themselves.

(6) Small boy of ten, named Toka, the terror of the village for
his illimitable impudence and unsurpassed devilry. But as he was a
particular friend of the white man (and could not be prevented) he was
allowed to come. He had three dogs.

Before we started old Sru, Nalik, and myself had some Hollands, two
bottles of which were also placed in the care of Nalik's wife. The
"devil," as Toka was called, mimicked us as we drank, smacked his lips
and rubbed one hand up and down his stomach. One of the big girls cuffed
him for being saucy. He retaliated by darting between her legs and
throwing her down upon the sand.

Presently we started, the women and children going ahead, with the
exception of the "devil," who stuck close to me, and carried my Snider
in one hand and my double-barrel muzzle-loader in the other.

For the first two or three miles our way lay along the hard, white
beach, whose sands were covered everywhere by millions of tiny,
blue-backed, red-legged soldier crabs, moving to and fro in companies,
regiments, and divisions, hastening to burrow before the daylight
revealed their presence to their dreaded enemies--the golden-winged sand
plovers and the greedy sooty terns, who yet knew how to find them by the
myriad small nodules of sand they left to betray their hiding-place.

Oh, the sweet, sweet smell of the forest as it is borne down from the
mountains and carried seaward, to gladden, it may be, the heart of some
hard-worked, broken-spirited sailor, who, in a passing ship, sees from
aloft this fair, fair island wit