lage accompanied me, or waited for me at the shore,
sure of hilarious hours. I must make children my companions, here,
for my older friends were so oppressed by the gloom of race
extinction that save for Malicious Gossip and one or two others,
there was no capacity for joyousness left in them. Exploding Eggs was
my chum, paid as forager and firemaker, but giving from friendliness
his services as a wise and admirable teacher of the unknown to one
unmade by civilization.

The bay of Atuona, narrow between high cliffs covered with
cocoanut-trees, was the scene of my lessons. The tide came booming
into this cove from the Bay of Traitors, often with bewildering force,
and a day or two a month as gently as the waves at Waikiki. The
river spread a broad mouth to drink the brine, and the white sand
was over-run by the flowered vines that crept seaward to taste the
salt. No house was in sight, no man-made structure to mar the
primitive, as our merry crew of boys and girls sported naked in the
surf, fished from the rocks, or lay upon the shining beach.

For my first essay I used the lid of a box that had enclosed an
ornate coffin ordered from Tahiti by a chief who anticipated dying.
It was large, and weighty to drag or push through the surf to the
proper distance. Laboring valiantly with it, I reached some distance
from the shore, and prepared a triumphal return. The waves were big,
curving above me in sheets of clearest emerald crested with spray,
breaking into foam and rising again, endlessly reshaping, repeating
themselves.

Awaiting my opportunity, I chose one as it rose behind me, and flung
myself upon it. Up and up and still higher I went, carried by
resistless momentum, and suddenly like a chip in a hurricane I was
flung forward at a fearsome speed, through rushing chaos of wind and
water, seeing the beach dashing toward me, shouting with exultation.

At the next instant my trusty board turned traitor. Its prow sank,
the end beneath me rose, and like a stone discharged from a sling I
was thrown under the waves, head over heels, banging my head and
body on the sand, leaped upon by following waves that piled me into
shallow water, rolling me over and over, striking me a blow with the
coffin-lid at every roll.

I lay high and dry, panting and aching, while from all the beach
rose shouts of laughter. Exploding Eggs rolled on the sand in his
delight, holding his gasping sides, scarcely able to remind me of
the necessity,