I cannot for the life of me tell you the correct name of the Isle we next called at; they all had native names and I never could understand half of them. I think it was called Mulooka; anyway it was a fine place and well wooded. I shall never forget the beautiful sight of the forest-clad country and the intense loneliness of the wooded depths away from the tracks. I stood in the wood alone and gazed up at the branches overhead. They were covered with big breathing blossoms that had beaks on them; they were big fat parrot-birds chuckling away to themselves as the trade-wind swept across, blew the top branches aside and revealed the deep blue skies. I turned round and looked west; there through the trees far away stretched the dark blue crinkling Pacific, dotted here and there with native canoes, paddled along swiftly from shore to shore. On the beach far below were groups of dark men and half-castes by our little sloop.
I must tell you of the fashions of those times. Some of the chiefs wore a dirty white collar only, and a waistbelt wherein was stuck an old-fashioned revolver and rusty knife. Another stood on the shore as proud as possible attired in a waistcoat. Men and women seemed to vie with one another at making themselves look ridiculous and outrageous too. Of course, most people were amused by them. I shall never forget how the Dane laughed; he was a real good fellow that poet. I laughed too, but not like him; I was getting a bit used to sights of that kind. As for Hornecastle he simply looked on and yawned. Finding that he was staying the night and did not intend leaving till late the next day, I made up my mind to have a look round and go into the interior, so off I went alone. I am constituted that way and am never so happy as when I am completely alone with no one to ply me with questions or tell me their experiences while I am keenly interested in my own at that precise moment.
About a mile from the shore I came across a village of native homesteads built on a beautiful spot shaped out and shaded by the hand of instinct. There they stood dotting the landscape by the cooling shade of palms, yams, orange and other trees of luxuriant tropic foliage. In the cleared spaces by those huts squatted the tribes of powerful mothers and men, all of them dressed in no clothes excepting their hair, which sprouted upwards on the top of their heads and shone in the sunlight. As I emerged from the forest trees into full view the tiny children stopped from their gambolling, stared at me for a moment and then all raced off towards the village homesteads as though for dear life. They ran so fast that I could only see their legs twinkling in the sun-gleam. Then uprose the wild mothers and stalwart forest men, and between their bare legs, with little wistful demon-like faces, those frightened children peeped at me as I walked across the scrub and waved my hand, smiling as I approached them.