rd's roost in the Pacific are thus described by Mrs. Stevenson:

"Leaving the yacht _Casco_ in the lagoon, we hired a cottage on the
beach where we lived for several weeks. Fakarava is an atoll of the
usual horseshoe shape, so narrow that one can walk across it in ten
minutes, but of great circumference; it lay so little above the sea
level that one had a sense of insecurity, justified by the terrible
disasters following the last hurricane in the group. Not far from
where we lived the waves had recently swept over the narrow strip of
coral during a storm. Our life passed in a gentle monotony of peace.
At sunrise we walked from our front door into the warm, shallow waters
of the lagoon for our bath; we cooked our breakfast on the remains of
an old American cooking stove I discovered on the beach, and spent the
rest of the morning sorting over the shells we had found the previous
day. After lunch and a siesta we crossed the island to the windward
side and gathered more shells. Sometimes we would find the strangest
fish stranded in pools between the rocks by the outgoing tide, many of
them curiously shaped and brilliantly colored. Some of the most
gorgeous were poisonous to eat, and capable of inflicting very
unpleasant wounds with their fins. The captain suffered for a long
time with a sort of paralysis in a finger he had scratched when
handling a fish with a beak like a parrot....

"The close of the placid day marked the beginning of the most
agreeable part of the twenty-four hours; it was the time of the moon,
and the shadows that fell from the cocoanut leaves were so sharply
defined that one involuntarily stepped over them. After a simple
dinner and a dip in the soft sea, we awaited our invariable visitor,
M. Donat Rimareau, the half-caste vice-president. As it was not the
season for pearl fishing, there were no white men on the island,
though now and again a schooner with a French captain would appear and
disappear like a phantom ship. The days were almost intolerably hot,
but with the setting of the sun a gentle breeze sprang up. We spent
the evenings in the moonlight, sitting on mattresses spread on the
veranda, our only chair being reserved for our guest. The conversation
with M. Rimareau, who was half Tahitian, was delightful. Night after
night we sat entranced at his feet, thrilled by stories of Tahiti and
the Paumotus, always of a supernatural character. There was a strange
sect in Fakarava called the 'Whistler