“There’ll be no salvage on her,” said Captain Pincher, “because if she’s still afloat, she ain’t likely to get in the track of any bloody steamer.  I’ve heard of those derelic’s wanderin’ roun’ a bloody lifetime, especially if they’re loaded with lumber.  They end up usually on some reef.”

This casual conversation was the prelude to the strangest coincidence of my life.  When I awoke the next morning, I found that the big sea had not come and that the sun was shining.  My head full of the romance of wrecks and piracy, I climbed the hill behind the Tiare Hotel to the signal station.  There I examined the semaphore, which showed a great white ball when the mail-steamships appeared, and other symbols for the arrivals of different kinds of craft, men-of-war, barks, and schooners.  There was a cozy house for the lookout and his family, and, as everywhere in Tahiti, a garden of flowers and fruit-trees.  I could see Point Venus to the right, with its lighthouse, and the bare tops of the masts of the ships at the quays.  Gray and red roofs of houses peeped from the foliage below, and a red spire of a church stood up high.

The storms had ceased in the few hours since dawn, and the sun was high and brilliant.  Moorea, four leagues away, loomed like a mammoth battle-ship, sable and grim, her turrets in the lowering clouds on the horizon, her anchors a thousand fathoms deep.  The sun was drinking water through luminous pipes.  The harbor was a gleaming surface, and the reef from this height was a rainbow of color.  All hues were in the water, emerald and turquoise, palest blue and gold.  I sat down and closed my eyes to recall old Walt’s lines of beauty about the

    —­World below the brine. 
    Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves. 
    Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seed. 
    The thick tangle,... and pink turf.

When I looked again at the reef I espied a small boat, almost a speck outside the coral barrier.  She was too small for an inter-island cutter, and smaller than those do not venture beyond the reef.  She was downing her single sail, and the sun glinted on the wet canvas.  I called to the guardian of the semaphore, and when he pointed his telescope at the object, he shouted out: 

“Mais, c’est curieux!  Et ees a schmall vessel, a sheep’s boat!”

I waited for no more, but with all sorts of conjectures racing through my mind, I hurried down the hill.  Under the club balcony I called up to Captain Goeltz, who already had his glass fixed.  He answered: 

“She’s a ship’s boat, with three men, a jury rig, and barrels and boxes.  She’s from a wreck, that’s sure.”

He came rolling down the narrow stairway, and together we stood at the quai du Commerce as the mysterious boat drew nearer.  We saw that the oarsmen were rowing fairly strongly against the slight breeze, and our fears of the common concomitants of wrecks,—­starvation and corpses—­disappeared as we made out their faces through the glasses.  They stood out bronzed and hearty.  The boat came up along the embankment, one of the three steering, with as matter of fact an air as if they had returned from a trip within the lagoon.  There was a heap of things in the boat, the sail, a tank, a barrel, cracker-boxes, blankets, and some clothing.