eremony. We smiled pleasantly at each other, and then he took me
to his house, which, according to his high rank, was surrounded by
a stone wall. He rummaged about inside for a long time, and finally
brought out a few paltry objects; I thought best to pay well for them,
telling him that as he was a "big fellow-master," I was ready to
pay extra for the honour of having a souvenir of him. This flattered
him so much that he consented to have his photograph taken; and he
posed quite cleverly, while the others walked uneasily around us,
looking at the camera as if it were likely to explode at any moment;
and as none of them dared have his picture taken, I left.

Rounding a bend of the path on my way home, I suddenly came upon a
young woman. First she looked at me in deadly fright, then, with a
terrified cry, she jumped over the fence, and burst into hysterical
laughter, while a dozen invisible women shrieked; then they all ran
away, and as I went on, I could hear that the flight had ceased and the
shrieks changed to hearty laughter. They had taken me for a kidnapper,
or feared some other harm, as was natural enough with their experience
of certain kinds of white men.

Walking along, I heard the explosions of the volcano like a far-away
cannonade. The dull shocks gave my walk a peculiar solemnity, but the
bush prevented any outlook, and only from the coast I occasionally
saw the volcanic clouds mounting into the sky.

From the old mission-house the view on a clear day is splendid. On
the slope stand a few large trees, whose cleft leaves frame
the indescribably blue sea, which breaks in snowy lines in
the lava-boulders below. Far off, I can see Malekula, with its
forest-covered mountains, and summer clouds hanging above it. It
is a dreamlike summer day, so beautiful, bright and mild as to be
hardly real. One feels a certain regret at being unable to absorb
all the beauty, at having to stand apart as an outsider, a patch on
the brightness rather than a part of it.

At night the view is different, but just as enchanting. A fine dust
from the volcano floats in the air and the pale moonlight plays softly
on the smooth surface of the bay, filling the atmosphere with silver,
so that everything shines in the white light, the long, flat point,
the forest; even the bread-fruit tree on the slope, whose outline cuts
sharply into the brightness, is not black, but a darker silver. In
the greenish sky the stars glitter, not sharply as t