fringing the steep sides of
mountains. Rude and bare hills embraced the inlet upon either hand; it
was enclosed to the landward by a bulk of shattered mountains. In every
crevice of that barrier the forest harboured, roosting and nesting there
like birds about a ruin; and far above, it greened and roughened the
razor edges of the summit.

Under the eastern shore, our schooner, now bereft of any breeze,
continued to creep in: the smart creature, when once under way,
appearing motive in herself. From close aboard arose the bleating of
young lambs; a bird sang in the hillside; the scent of the land and of a
hundred fruits or flowers flowed forth to meet us; and, presently, a
house or two appeared, standing high upon the ankles of the hills, and
one of these surrounded with what seemed a garden. These conspicuous
habitations, that patch of culture, had we but known it, were a mark of
the passage of whites; and we might have approached a hundred islands
and not found their parallel. It was longer ere we spied the native
village, standing (in the universal fashion) close upon a curve of
beach, close under a grove of palms; the sea in front growling and
whitening on a concave arc of reef. For the coco-tree and the island man
are both lovers and neighbours of the surf. "The coral waxes, the palm
grows, but man departs," says the sad Tahitian proverb; but they are all
three, so long as they endure, co-haunters of the beach. The mark of
anchorage was a blow-hole in the rocks, near the south-easterly corner
of the bay. Punctually to our use, the blow-hole spouted; the schooner
turned upon her heel; the anchor plunged. It was a small sound, a great
event; my soul went down with these moorings whence no windlass may
extract nor any diver fish it up; and I, and some part of my ship's
company, were from that hour the bondslaves of the isles of Vivien.

Before yet the anchor plunged a canoe was already paddling from the
hamlet. It contained two men: one white, one brown and tattooed across
the face with bands of blue, both in immaculate white European clothes:
the resident trader, Mr. Regler, and the native chief, Taipi-kikino.
"Captain, is it permitted to come on board?" were the first words we
heard among the islands. Canoe followed canoe, till the ship swarmed
with stalwart, six-foot men in every stage of undress; some in a shirt,
some in a loin-cloth, one in a handkerchief imperfectly adjusted; some,
and these the more considerab