on the South Coast. And for three days
afterwards the sea was stormy. Gray clouds chased one another
across the sky. Then the wind dropped, and the sea was calm
and blue. The Pacific is more desolate than other seas; its
spaces seem more vast, and the most ordinary journey upon it
has somehow the feeling of an adventure. The air you breathe
is an elixir which prepares you for the unexpected. Nor is it
vouchsafed to man in the flesh to know aught that more nearly
suggests the approach to the golden realms of fancy than the
approach to Tahiti. Murea, the sister isle, comes into view
in rocky splendour, rising from the desert sea mysteriously,
like the unsubstantial fabric of a magic wand. With its
jagged outline it is like a Monseratt of the Pacific, and you
may imagine that there Polynesian knights guard with strange
rites mysteries unholy for men to know. The beauty of the
island is unveiled as diminishing distance shows you in
distincter shape its lovely peaks, but it keeps its secret as
you sail by, and, darkly inviolable, seems to fold itself
together in a stony, inaccessible grimness. It would not
surprise you if, as you came near seeking for an opening in
the reef, it vanished suddenly from your view, and nothing met
your gaze but the blue loneliness of the Pacific.

Tahiti is a lofty green island, with deep folds of a darker
green, in which you divine silent valleys; there is mystery in
their sombre depths, down which murmur and plash cool streams,
and you feel that in those umbrageous places life from
immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways.
Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression
is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to
the enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which you
may see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughing
at his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in
the communion of laughter he finds himself more intolerably alone.
For Tahiti is smiling and friendly; it is like a
lovely woman graciously prodigal of her charm and beauty;
and nothing can be more conciliatory than the entrance into the
harbour at Papeete. The schooners moored to the quay are trim
and neat, the little town along the bay is white and urbane,
and the flamboyants, scarlet against the blue sky, flaunt
their colour like a cry of passion. They are sensual with an
unashamed violence that leaves you breathless. And the crowd