with panting gill and flapping tail.  It is a great place for us boys, for here at low tides in the winter we strip off, and with naked hands catch the mullet and gars and silvery-sided trumpeters, and throw them out on the beach, to be grilled later on over a fire of glowing honeysuckle cobs, and eaten without salt.  What boy does care about such a thing as salt at such times, when his eye is bright and his skin glows with the flush of health, and the soft murmuring of the sea is mingling in his ears with the thrilling call of the birds, and the rustling hum of the bush; and the yellow sun shines down from a glorious sky of cloudless blue, and dries the sand upon his naked feet; and the very joy of being alive, and away from school, is happiness enough in itself!

For here, by rock and pool on this lonely Austral beach, it is good and sweet for man or boy to be, and, if but in utter idleness, to watch and listen—­and think.

Solepa

The last strokes of the bell for evening service had scarce died away when I heard a footstep on the pebbly path, and old Pakia, staff in hand and pipe dangling from his pendulous ear-lobe, walked quietly up the steps and sat down cross-legged on the verandah.  All my own people had gone to church and the house was very quiet.

“Good evening, Pakia,” I said in English, “how are you, old man?”

A smile lit up the brown, old, wrinkled face as he heard my voice—­for I was lying down in the sitting-room, smoking my after-supper pipe—­as he answered in the island dialect that he was well, but that his house was in darkness and he, being lonely, had come over to sit with me awhile.

“That is well, Pakia, for I too am lonely, and who so good as thee to talk with when the mind is heavy and the days are long, and no sail cometh up from the sea-rim?  Come, sit here within the doorway, for the night wind is chill; and fill thy pipe.”

He came inside as I rose and turned up the lamp so that its light shone full on his bald, bronzed head and deeply tatooed arms and shoulders.  Laying down his polished staff of temana wood, he came over to me, placed his hand on my arm, patted it gently, and then his kindly old eyes sought mine.

“Be not dull of heart, taka taina.[1] A ship will soon come—­it may be to-morrow; it must be soon; for twice have I heard the cocks crow at midnight since I was last here, three days ago.  And when the cocks crow at night-time a ship is near.”

“May it be so, Pakia, for I am weary of waiting.  Ten months have come and gone since I first put foot on this land of Nukufetau, and a ship was to have come here in four.”

He filled his pipe, then drawing a small mat near my lounge, he squatted on the floor, and we smoked in silence, listening to the gentle lapping of the lagoon waters upon the inner beach and the beating, never-ceasing hum of the surf on the reef beyond.  Overhead the branches of the palms swayed and rustled to the night-breeze.