rown hills, rising one above the other,
those nearest the water clothed in countless shades of green, verging
from deepest olive to the tender tint of newly awakened buds in the
springtime, those farthest away blue or violet against the horizon.

Golden days these were when Time himself grew young again, and,
resting on his scythe, dreamed the sunlit hours away. Until eventide
the summer skies above us slept, as did the summer seas below us, when
both awakened from their slumbers flushed and rosy. On some evenings
the heavy white clouds piled high in the west seemed to catch fire,
the red blaze spreading over the heavens, to be reflected later
in the mirror-like water of the sea. Then the crimson light would
gradually change to amethyst and gold, with the sun hanging like
a ball of flame between heaven and earth, while every conceivable
colour, or combination of colours, played riotously over all in the
kaleidoscopic shifting of the clouds. At last the sun would touch the
horizon, sinking lower and lower into the sea, while the heavens lost
their glory, taking on pale tints of purple and violet. A moment more
and the swift darkness of the tropics would blot out every vestige
of colour, for there is no twilight in the Philippines, no half-tones
between the dazzling tropic sunset and the dusky tropic night.

Then there were other evenings when the colours lying in distinct
strata looked not unlike celestial _pousse-cafes_, or perhaps some
delicately blended shades of pink and blue and mauve, suggested to
a feminine mind creations of millinery art; or yet again, when a sky
that had been gray and sober all day suddenly blazed out into crimson
and gold at sunset, one was irresistibly reminded of a "Quakeress
grown worldly."

And then would come the night and the wonderful starlit heavens of
the tropics--

"--unfathom'd, untrod,
Save by even' and morn and the angels of God."

Every star sent a trail of light to the still water, seeming to fasten
the sky to the sea with long silver skewers; wonderful phosphorescence
played about beneath us like wraiths of drowned men luring one to
destruction; while in the musical lap of the water against the ship's
side one almost fancied the sound of Lorelei's singing. And then there
were starless nights with only a red moon to shine through cloudy
skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded
in black velvet, when the dusky s