or building we often find great
boulders hollowed out to the shape of a bowl. No one knows anything
about these stones or their purpose; possibly they are relics of an
earlier population that has entirely disappeared.

When I returned from my excursion I looked down on a wild foam-flecked
sea, over which the storm was raging as it did during the previous
cyclones. I realized that I should have to stay here for some time,
and ate my last provisions somewhat pensively. I only hoped that
the launch had found an anchorage, else she must inevitably have
been wrecked, and I should be left at the mercy of the natives for
an indefinite time. The hut in which I camped did not keep off the
rain, and I was wet and uncomfortable; thus I spent the first of a
series of miserable nights. I was anxious to know the fate of the
launch, and this in itself was enough to worry me; then I was without
reading or writing materials, and my days were spent near a smoky
fire, watching the weather, trying to find a dry spot, sleeping and
whistling. Sometimes a few natives came to keep me company; and once
I got hold of a man who spoke a little biche la mar, and was willing
to tell me about some old-time customs. However, like most natives, he
soon wearied of thinking, so that our conversations did not last long.

The natives kept me supplied with food in the most hospitable manner:
yam, taro, cabbage, delicately prepared, were at my disposal; but,
unaccustomed as I was to this purely vegetable diet, I soon felt such
a craving for meat that I began to dream about tinned-meat, surely not
a normal state of things. To add to my annoyance, rumours got afloat
to the effect that the launch was wrecked; and if this was true,
my situation was bad indeed.

On the fifth day I decided to try and find the anchorage where I
supposed the launch to be. The wind had dropped a little, but it was
still pouring, and the walk through the slippery, devastated forest,
up and down steep hills and gullies, across fallen trees, in a thick,
oppressive fog, was strenuous enough. In the afternoon, hearing that
the launch was somewhere near, we descended to the coast, where we came
upon the captain and the crew. They had managed to anchor the launch
at the outbreak of the storm, and had camped in an old hut on the
beach; but the huge waves, breaking over the reef, had created such
a current along the beach that the launch had dragged her anchors,
and was now caught in the w