It was hard to keep on a pareu in a swift-running stream unless one knew how to tie it.  I lost mine several times, and had to grope shamefacedly in the race for it, until finally Lovaina made the proper knots and turned it into a diaper.

“I not go swim now,” she said regretfully, “‘cep’ some night-time.  Too big.  Before I marry, eighteen seven’y-nine, and before my three children grow up, I swim plenty then.”

“Lovaina,” I said, “it was hardly eighteen seventynine you were married.  You are only forty-three now.  Was it not eighty-nine?”

“Mus’ be,” she replied thoughtfully.  “I nineteen when marry.  My father give me that house, now Tiare Hotel, for weddin’ present.  All furnish.  You should see that marry!  My God! there was bottle in yard all broken.  Admiral French fleet send band; come hisself with all his officer’.  Five o’clock mornin’-time still dance and drink.  Bigges’ time T’ytee.  You not walk barefoot long time ’count broken glass everywhere.”

I had heard that delicious incident before, but it never lost savor.

After dinner and a prolonged session upon the camphor-wood chest to hear Lovaina’s chatter, I came leisurely to the Annexe along the shore of the lagoon.  It was after midnight, and the heavens sang with stars as the ripe moon dipped into the western sea.

The tropics only know the fullness of the firmament, the myriad of suns and planets, the brilliancy of the constellations, and the overpowering revelation of the infinite above.  In less fervent latitudes one can never feel the bigness of the vault on high, nor sense the intimacy one had here with the worlds that spin in the measureless ether.

Two lofty-sparred ships but newly from the California coast swung at moorings within a dozen feet of the grass that borders the coral banks, and on their decks, under the light of lamps, American sailors lifted a shanty of the rolling Mississippi.  I remembered when I had first heard it.  I was a boy, and had stolen away on a bark, the Julia Rollins, bound for Rio, and as we hauled in the line let go by the tow-boat, a seaman raised the bowline song.  To me, with “Two Years Before the Mast” and Clark Russell’s galley yarns churning in my mind, it was sweeter far than ever siren voiced to lure her victims to their death, and rough and tarry as was the shanty-man, Caruso had never seemed to me such a glorious figure.

This fascination of the sea and of its border had never left me, though I had passed years on ships and nearly all my life within sound of the surf.  It is as strong as ever, holding me thrall in the sight of its waters and its freights, and unhappy when denied them.  Best of all literature I love the stories of old ocean, and glad am I

    That such as have no pleasure
    For to praise the Lord by measure,
    They may enter into galleons and serve him on the sea.

In Tahiti the sea was very near and meant much.  One felt toward it as must the mountaineer who lives in the shadow of the Matterhorn; it was always part of one’s thoughts, for all men and things came and went by it, and the great world lay beyond it.