dissolving effect of the blaze, I ran to the beach, where I watched the sunrise.  There recurred to me the mornings and evenings in the Orient when I had seen the Parsees, the fire-worshippers of India, offer their devotions, standing or kneeling on their rugs on the seashore.  I, too, raised my hands in silent admiration of the mother of all life.  Then I observed about me the hurry and scurry of the dwellers on the sands and in the water.  Small hermit-crabs in shells many sizes too big for them toddled about, land-crabs rushed frantically and awkwardly for their holes, and Portuguese men-of-war sailed by the coast, luffing to avoid casting up on the beach.  A brief period of observation, and I dashed back to the fare umu, and trimmed the fire.  When cooked, I brought my food to my house, where I had a low table like a Japanese zen, and with rolls from the Chinese store I made my first meal, adding oranges, papayas and pineapple.

From the doorway, for all I encompassed in my view, I might have been the sole human on this island.  I could look to the reef and far across the lagoon to Hitiaa or down the beach, but from that spot no other house was in sight.  If I went around the house, I was almost on the Broadway of Tautira, the home of Ori-a-Ori before me, and a coral church close to it, with other buildings and groves toward the mango copse of T’yonni.  On the bushes huge nets were drying, and canoes were drawn up into the purau and pandanus clumps.  As the day advanced, the artless incidents of the settlement aroused my interest.  I saw about me scenes and affairs which had caused a famous poet after a week or two in this very lieu to write: 

    Here found I all I had forecast: 
    The long roll of the sapphire sea
    That keeps the land’s virginity;
    The stalwart giants of the wood
    Laden with toys and flowers and food;
    The precious forest pouring out
    To compass the whole town about;
    The town itself with streets of lawn,
    Loved of the moon, blessed by the dawn,
    Where the brown children all the day
    Keep up a ceaseless noise of play,
    Play in the sun, play in the rain,
    Nor ever quarrel or complain;
    And late at night in the woods of fruit,
    Hark! do you hear the passing flute?

The school-house was near to the master’s home where Choti lived, and often I heard the children learning by singsong, the way I myself had been taught the arithmetical tables.  The teacher was Alfred, a Tahitian, who, being a scholar, must have a French name, and wear clothes and shoes when in his classes, but who very sensibly sat with Choti upon his veranda in only his pareu.  Much of the time the pupils played in the grounds, hopscotch and wrestling on stilts being favorite games.  Alfred regretted that the ancient Tahitian games which his grandfather played were out of style.  Among these was a variation of golf, with curved sticks, and a ball made of strips