I strode down and out of the forest shadows. Before me lay miles of winding coast. The odours of the forests breathed enchantment. As I stood beneath the flamboyant trees, and the migrating cockatoos screeched weirdly, I gazed at the ocean. Round the bend of that magic shore, just to the right of me, were droves of sea-nymphs. Their curly, wind-tossed hair streamed down their backs as they dived and splashed in the blue lagoons.
As I dream on once more, the scene vividly presents itself before my eyes, as I seem to stand again beneath the bread-fruit tree and watch those dusky, sportive angels. There they splash in the blue waters by the promontory. Soft-fingered paddles propel their delicate, shining bodies along. I see their eyes sparkling as they look shoreward and see me. I hear a wild shriek of fright as they mark my white face, then—splash! they have all dived into the deep blue sea—no sportive faeries, but native girls having their morning bath!
As I walk along the shore a more wonderful sight greets my gaze.
By the shore grog shanty, that lies just by the hollows, is something in the ocean that looks like the weather-beaten figurehead of a sunken Chinese junk. Suddenly it moves; at last two hands rise from the depths and start to rub with cleansing vigour the matted hair and crooked-nosed face. It is the gnarled, wrinkled physiognomy of Ranjo, the store-keeper of the grog shanty. He, too, is having his morning bath. As he stands there reflecting, immersed to the shoulders, he is deep in thoughts that are as vital to him as the problem of the visible universe. He does not yearn to probe Space and fathom the distance of the stars and the marvels of far-off worlds; he is simply wondering how he can manage to get those unprincipled beachcombers to pay their bills!
Not far away from Ranjo’s spacious bath is the promontory, on which grows three-plumed coco-palms. It looks like a tiny track from the sea that leads up, up into the vastnesses of the distant mountains. On the shallows of the sands, just below the promontory, lies the huge, wrecked hulk of the old windjammer, the _South Sea Rover_. Washed ashore during a terrific hurricane some years before, she lies almost high and dry, rotting and bleaching in the tropical suns. As I stare at that old hulk, the carved figurehead’s outstretched hands seem, to me, symbolical of that indefinable appeal to the heart which one feels in the atmosphere of great poetry. The praying hands point seaward, yes, to the far-off, dim, blue sky-line, as though, in her derelict old age, she longs to catch the tide, to go a-roving again with her merry crew.