them upon each other with
such speed and dexterity that soon a small fire, fed by shreds of
cocoanut fiber, blazed on a rock, with plantains heaped about it to
roast.

While we rested after the feast Vanquished Often, squatted by my side,
made for my comfort a wide-brimmed hat of thick leaves pinned
together with thorns, a shelter from the sun's rays that was grateful
to my tender scalp. Resuming our way, we met upon the trail a
handsome small wild donkey, fearful of our kind, yet longing for
company.

"_Pureekee!_" said Exploding Eggs, meaning _bourrique_, the French
for donkey. And Vanquished Often related that once hundreds of these
beasts roamed through the jungle, descendants of a pair of asses
escaped from a ship decades before, but that most of them had
starved to death in dry periods, or been eaten by hungry natives.

Farther on we passed acres of the sensitive plant, called by the
Marquesans _teita hakaina_, the Modest Herb. A wide glade in a curve
of the mountains was filled with a sea of it, and my companions
delighted in dashing through its curiously nervous leafage, that
shuddered and folded its feathery sprays together at their touch. If
shocked further it opened its leaflets as if to say, "What's the use?
I'm shy, but I can't stay under cover forever."

In such artless amusements the day passed, a day that remains
forever an idyl of simple loveliness to me, such as any man is the
richer for having known. When darkness overtook us, we made for
ourselves the softest of ferny beds, and slept serenely, untroubled
by anything, under the light of the stars.

As we returned next day to the village in the valley, we found upon
a hill far from the beach the tombs of the sailors who first raised
the standard of France in these islands. The eternal jungle had so
housed in their monuments that we had hot work to break through the
jealous lantana and pandanus to see the stones. Neither Vanquished
Often nor Exploding Eggs had ever cast eyes on them, and neither had
but a legendary memory of how these men of the conquering race had
met their death.

A great slab of native basalt eroded by seventy years of sun and
rain bore the barely discernible epitaph:

"Ci Git
Edouard Michel Halley
Capitaine de Corvette
Officier de la Legion d'honneur
Fondateur de la colonie de Vait-hua
Mort au champ d'honneur
Le 17 ----bre, 1842"

I read it to my friends. They pressed thei