gh three-and-twenty years have passed since then, Denison
often wishes he could live those seven months in Leasse over again, and
let this, his latter-day respectability, go hang; because to men like
him respectability means tradesmen's bills, and a deranged liver, and a
feeling that he will die on a bed with his boots off, and be pawed about
by shabby ghouls smelling of gin. There, it is true, he had no boots to
die in had his time come suddenly, but he did not feel the loss of them
except when he went hunting wild pigs with Kusis in the mountains. And
though he had no boots, he was well off in more important things--to
wit, ten pounds of negro-head tobacco, lots of fishing-tackle, a
Winchester rifle and plenty of ammunition, a shirt and trousers of
dungaree, heaps to eat and drink, and the light heart of a boy. What
more could a young fool wish for--in the North-west Pacific. But I want
to tell something of how Denison lived in a place where every prospect
pleased, and where (from a theological point of view) only man was vile.

*****

At daylight he would awaken, and, lying on his bed of mats upon the
cane-work floor, listen to the song of the surf on the barrier reef a
mile away. If it sounded quick and clear it meant no fishing in the blue
water beyond, for the surf would be heavy and the current strong; if it
but gently murmured, he and Kusis and a dozen other brown-skinned men
(Denison was as brown as any of them) would eat a hurried meal of fish
and baked taro, and then carry their red-painted canoes down to the
water, and, paddling out through the passage in the reef, fish for
bonito with thick rods of _pua_ wood and baitless hooks of irridescent
pearl shell.

Then, as the sun came out hot and strong and the trade wind flecked the
ocean swell with white, they would head back for shining Leasse beach,
on which the women and girls awaited their return, some with baskets in
their hands to carry home the fish, and some with gourds of water which,
as the fishermen bent their bodies low, they poured upon them to wash
away the stains of salty spray.

An hour of rest has passed, and then a fat-faced, smiling girl (Denison
dreams of her sometimes, even now) comes to the house to make a bowl of
kava for the white man and Kusis before they go hunting the wild pig in
the mountain forest. There is no ceremony about this kava-drinking as
there is in conventional Samoa; fat-faced Sipi simply sits cross-legged
upon the mat