-A STRUGGLE FOR
LIFE--THE ISLET OF PALMS.

"Keel never ploughed that lonely sea,
That isle no human eye hath viewed;
Around it still in tumult rude,
The surges everlastingly,
Burst on the coral-girded shore
With mighty bound and ceaseless roar;
A fresh unsullied work of God,
By human footstep yet untrod."

The native lad now seemed to be quite overwhelmed with grief. He had
made no manifestations of it while we were endeavouring to discover some
trace of his companions, but when at length we relinquished the attempt,
and it became certain that they had all perished, he uttered a low,
wailing cry, full of distress and anguish, and laying his head upon his
hands, sobbed bitterly.

The Frenchman had told us that the island lay to the northward; and we
now put the head of the boat in that direction, steering by the sun,
which was just setting.

When the first violence of the boy's grief had somewhat abated, Arthur
spoke to him gently, in the dialect of the Society Islands. He listened
attentively, turning his large eyes upon Arthur's face with an
expression of mingled timidity and interest and replied in a low,
musical voice. They seemed to understand one another, and talked
together for some time. The language spoken by the boy, differed so
little, as Arthur told us, from that of the Tahitians, that he easily
gathered the meaning of what he said. Upon being questioned as to the
distance of the island, and the course which we must steer in order to
reach it, he pointed to a bright star, just beginning to be visible in
the north-east.

It is customary with the South-sea Islanders, before setting out on
their long voyages, in which it is necessary to venture out of sight of
land, to select some star by which to regulate their course in the
night-time; this they call the "aveia," or guiding star of the voyage.
They are thus enabled to sail from island to island, and from group to
group, between which all intercourse would otherwise be impossible
without a compass. The star now pointed out to us, had been fixed upon
by the companions of the little islander, at the commencement of their
ill-fated voyage, as marking the direction of the home which they were
destined never to regain. Among other things, we learned from the boy,
that his native island, which we were now endeavouring to reach, was the
largest of a group of three, over all of which his father's authority,
as chief or king, extended: t