a concertina.
They began to play, and one of them sang. The native song sounded
strange on these instruments. Then to the singing a couple began to
dance. It was a barbaric dance, savage and primeval, rapid, with quick
movements of the hands and feet and contortions of the body; it was
sensual, sexual even, but sexual without passion. It was very animal,
direct, weird without mystery, natural in short, and one might almost
say childlike. At last they grew tired. They stretched themselves on the
deck and slept, and all was silent. The skipper lifted himself heavily
out of his chair and clambered down the companion. He went into his
cabin and got out of his clothes. He climbed into his bunk and lay
there. He panted a little in the heat of the night.

But next morning, when the dawn crept over the tranquil sea, the opening
in the reef which had eluded them the night before was seen a little to
the east of where they lay. The schooner entered the lagoon. There was
not a ripple on the surface of the water. Deep down among the coral
rocks you saw little coloured fish swim. When he had anchored his ship
the skipper ate his breakfast and went on deck. The sun shone from an
unclouded sky, but in the early morning the air was grateful and cool.
It was Sunday, and there was a feeling of quietness, a silence as
though nature were at rest, which gave him a peculiar sense of comfort.
He sat, looking at the wooded coast, and felt lazy and well at ease.
Presently a slow smile moved his lips and he threw the stump of his
cigar into the water.

"I guess I'll go ashore," he said. "Get the boat out."

He climbed stiffly down the ladder and was rowed to a little cove. The
coconut trees came down to the water's edge, not in rows, but spaced out
with an ordered formality. They were like a ballet of spinsters, elderly
but flippant, standing in affected attitudes with the simpering graces
of a bygone age. He sauntered idly through them, along a path that could
be just seen winding its tortuous way, and it led him presently to a
broad creek. There was a bridge across it, but a bridge constructed of
single trunks of coconut trees, a dozen of them, placed end to end and
supported where they met by a forked branch driven into the bed of the
creek. You walked on a smooth, round surface, narrow and slippery, and
there was no support for the hand. To cross such a bridge required sure
feet and a stout heart. The skipper hesitated. But he saw on the o