s toward the eastern distance, and no glimpse of land or
cloud made us aught but solitary travelers in illimitable space. The
sun was beneath the deep, but in the hush of the pale light one felt
the awe of its coming. Slowly a faint glow began to gild a line that
circled the farthest east. Gold it was at first, like a segment of a
marriage ring, then a bolt of copper shot from the level waters to
the zenith and a thousand vivid colors were emptied upon the sky and
the sea. Roses were strewn on the glowing waste, rose and gold and
purple curtained the horizon, and suddenly, without warning, abrupt
as lightning, the sun beamed hot above the edge of the world.

The Marquesans stirred, their bodies stretched and their lungs
expanded in the throes of returning consciousness. Then one sat up
and called loudly, "_A titahi a atu!_ Another day!" The others rose,
and immediately began to uncover the _popoi_ bowl. They had canned
fish and bread, too, and ate steadily, without a word, for ten
minutes. The steersman, who had joined them, returned to the helm,
and the priest and I enjoyed the bananas and canned beef with water
from the jug, and cigarettes.

All day the _Jeanne d'Arc_ held steadily on the several tacks we
steered, and all day no living thing but bird or fish disturbed the
loneliness of the great empty sea. Pere Victorien read his breviary
or told his beads in abstracted contemplation, and I, lying on the
bottom of the boat with my hat shielding my eyes from the beating
rays of the sun, pondered on what I knew of Tai-o-hae, the port on
the island of Nuka-hiva, to which we were bound.

For two hundred years after the discovery of the southern group--the
islands we had left behind us--the northern group was still unknown
to the world. Captain Ingraham, of Boston, found Nuka-hiva in 1791,
and called the seven small islets the Washington Islands. Twenty
years later, during the war of 1812, Porter refitted his ships there
to prey upon the British, and but for the perfidy,--or, from another
view, the patriotism,--of an Englishman in his command, Porter might
have succeeded in making the Marquesas American possessions.

Tai-o-hae became the seat of power of the whites in the islands; it
waxed in importance, saw admirals, governors, and bishops sitting in
state on the broad verandas of government buildings, witnessed that
new thing, the making of a king and queen, knew the stolid march of
convicts, white and brown, images