with newly born calves, I never had an opportunity of seeing THEM suck.

Gradually our pleasant days at Vau Vau drew to a close. So quiet and
idyllic had the life been, so full of simple joys, that most of us, if
not all, felt a pang at the thought of our imminent departure from
the beautiful place. Profitable, in a pecuniary sense, the season had
certainly failed to be, but that was the merest trifle compared with
the real happiness and peace enjoyed during our stay. Even the terrible
tragedy which had taken one of our fellows from us could not spoil the
actual enjoyment of our visit, sad and touching as the event undoubtedly
was. There was always, too, a sufficiently arduous routine of necessary
duties to perform, preventing us from degenerating into mere lotus
eaters in that delicious afternoon-land. Nor even to me, friendless
nomad as I was, did the thought ever occur, "I will return no more."

But these lovely days spent in softly gliding over the calm, azure
depths, bathed in golden sunlight, gazing dreamily down at the
indescribable beauties of the living reefs, feasting daintily on
abundance of never-cloying fruit, amid scenes of delight hardly to be
imagined by the cramped mind of the town dweller; islands, air, and sea
all shimmering in an enchanted haze, and silence scarcely broken by
the tender ripple of the gently-parted waters before the boat's steady
keel--though these joys have all been lost to me, and I in "populous
city pent" endure the fading years, I would not barter the memory of
them for more than I can say, so sweet it is to me. And, then, our
relations with the natives had been so perfectly amicable, so free from
anything to regret. Perhaps this simple statement will raise a cynical
smile upon the lips of those who know Tahati, the New Hebrides, and
kindred spots with all their savage, bestial orgies of alternate
unbridled lust and unnamable cruelty. Let it be so. For my part, I
rejoice that I have no tale of weeks of drunkenness, of brutal rape,
treacherous murder, and almost unthinkable torture to tell.

For of such is the paradise of the beach-comber, and the hell of the
clean man. Not that I have been able to escape it altogether. When I say
that I once shipped, unwittingly, as sailing-master of a little white
schooner in Noumea, bound to Apia, finding when too late that she was a
"blackbirder"--"labour vessel," the wise it call--nothing more will be
needed to convince the initiated that I