ession in the shore several hundred feet in
width through which the waves extended their course, later to break in
foam on submerged rocks a hundred yards beyond.

The boat shot rapidly forward, and readily passed through the opening
between the cliffs. On each side, the rocks, jagged and rough, rose
threateningly, but a further recess to the right afforded shelter, and
the water became comparatively smooth. Passing through the channel and
rounding the obstructing rocks they found another passage of similar
extent which led further inland and brought them into a little crescent
shaped bay of something like a half mile in length by a quarter of a
mile in width. At several points were observed small strips of sandy
beach, and strange wading birds of the stork species were seen, but not
a suggestion or sign of a habitation.

"Crescent Bay!" cried Jim, noting the shape. "Isn't it fine here!"

"It's fine!" exclaimed the professor. "Who would think of such a place
as this hidden away in the fastness of these hills. It's like some of
the secret haunts of the buccaneers."

"It would be a nice bit of seamanship to bring a craft through that
channel, though," said Juarez.

"But I believe it could be done," said Jim.

The scenery grew wilder and more beautiful with every stroke of the
oars. From caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of many
colored plumage.

Few readers but are familiar with the glowing color in which voyagers
have painted the beautiful islands of the South Pacific. Nature has
lavished upon them her rarest gifts; deep shadowy groves, valleys
musical with murmuring streams, lofty mountains rising into the sapphire
heaven out of a girdle of eternal foliage; wonderous visions of color
in shrub and flower, the golden-yellow of the low-growing chinquapins,
and the blood red osiers; a bright fresh air, redolent of fragrance, and
a sea dimpling in cloudless sunshine.

But this fairy region, where Shakespeare might have fitly placed his
Oberon and Titania, was inhabited by a race unworthy of its charms; a
race enervated and corrupted, and abandoned to all those vices which
usually accompany or originate in a degrading and sanguinary idolatry.

The Tahitians were not cannibals, but they sacrificed human victims in
frightful numbers on the shrines of their hideous divinities.

Intoxication and theft were their predominant vices; continual wars
decimated the population so that in some cases great islan