a leaf, plainly on some arithmetical system; studied the result with great apparent contention of mind; and gave the answers.  Sidney Colvin was in robust health and gone a journey; and we should have a fair wind upon the morrow:  that was the result of our consultation, for which we paid a dollar.  The next day dawned cloudless and breathless; but I think Captain Reid placed a secret reliance on the sibyl, for the schooner was got ready for sea.  By eight the lagoon was flawed with long cat’s-paws, and the palms tossed and rustled; before ten we were clear of the passage and skimming under all plain sail, with bubbling scuppers.  So we had the breeze, which was well worth a dollar in itself; but the bulletin about my friend in England proved, some six months later, when I got my mail, to have been groundless.  Perhaps London lies beyond the horizon of the island gods.

Tembinok’, in his first dealings, showed himself sternly averse from superstition:  and had not the Equator delayed, we might have left the island and still supposed him an agnostic.  It chanced one day, however, that he came to our maniap’, and found Mrs. Stevenson in the midst of a game of patience.  She explained the game as well as she was able, and wound up jocularly by telling him this was her devil-work, and if she won, the Equator would arrive next day.  Tembinok’ must have drawn a long breath; we were not so high-and-dry after all; he need no longer dissemble, and he plunged at once into confessions.  He made devil-work every day, he told us, to know if ships were coming in; and thereafter brought us regular reports of the results.  It was surprising how regularly he was wrong; but he always had an explanation ready.  There had been some schooner in the offing out of view; but either she was not bound for Apemama, or had changed her course, or lay becalmed.  I used to regard the king with veneration as he thus publicly deceived himself.  I saw behind him all the fathers of the Church, all the philosophers and men of science of the past; before him, all those that are to come; himself in the midst; the whole visionary series bowed over the same task of welding incongruities.  To the end Tembinok’ spoke reluctantly of the island gods and their worship, and I learned but little.  Taburik is the god of thunder, and deals in wind and weather.  A while since there were wizards who could call him down in the form of lightning.  ’My patha he tell me he see:  you think he lie?’ Tienti—­pronounced something like ‘Chench,’ and identified by his majesty with the devil—­sends and removes bodily sickness.  He is whistled for in the Paumotuan manner, and is said to appear; but the king has never seen him.  The doctors treat disease by the aid of Chench:  eclectic Tembinok’ at the same time administering ‘pain-killer’ from his medicine-chest, so as to give the sufferer both chances.  ‘I think mo’ betta,’ observed his majesty, with more than his usual self-approval.  Apparently the gods are not jealous, and placidly enjoy both shrine and priest in common.  On Tamaiti’s medicine-tree, for instance, the model canoes are hung up ex voto for a prosperous voyage, and must therefore be dedicated to Taburik, god of the weather; but the stone in front is the place of sick folk come to pacify Chench.