friends. I gave myself up wholly to this
vague dreaming, call it home-sickness, or what you will, it enlivened
the oppressive colourlessness of the days and the loneliness of the
nights. As usual, a heavy shower came, luckily, perhaps, to interrupt
all softer thoughts.

Then followed a few clear days, which changed our mood entirely. The
cutter rolled confidingly in the morning breeze, and the sun glowed
warm and golden. In picturesque cascades the green forest seemed
to rush down the slopes to the bright coral beach, on which the sea
broke playfully. Once in a while a bird called far off in the depths
of the woods. It was delicious to lie on the warm beach and be dried
and roasted by the sun, to think of nothing in particular, but just
to exist. Two wild pigs came to the beach in the evening to dig for
yam that the natives had buried there; a chase, though unsuccessful,
gave excitement and movement. We could venture far inland now without
fear, for the natives were all away at the feast. Brilliant sunsets
closed the days in royal splendour. Behind a heavy cloud-bank which
hid the sun, he seemed to melt in the sea and to form one golden
element. Out of the cloud five yellow rays shot across the steel-blue
sky, so that it looked like one of those old-fashioned engravings
of God behind a cloud. When everything had melted into one gorgeous
fire, and we were still helpless before all that glory, the colours
faded away to the most delicate combinations of half-tones; soon the
stars came out glittering on the deep sky, first of all the Southern
Cross. Halley's comet was still faintly visible.

In the morning the sky was cloudless, and changed from one lovely
colour to the other, until the sun rose to give it its bright blue
and paint the shore in every tint. Then every stone at the bottom of
the sea was visible, and all the marvellous coral formations, with
their weird shapes and fiery colours, glowed in rose and violet and
pure golden yellow. Above lay big sea-stars, and large fish in bright
hues floated between the cliffs in soft, easy movements, while bright
blue little ones shot hither and thither like mad.

Bourbaki arrived with his younger brother, a neat and gentle-looking
boy. The feast was to begin that evening, and I asked Bourbaki if
they had plenty of pigs to eat. "Oh no," he said; "but that is of
no importance: we have a man to eat! Yesterday we killed him in
the bush, and to-day we will eat him." He said this