Who says it isn't a delicious spot,--that deep, narrow, and secluded vale, walled by almost perpendicular cliffs, hung with green tapestries of ferns and vines; that slender stream, like a thread of silver, embroidering a carpet of Nature's richest pattern; that torrent, leaping from the cliff into a garden of citrons; the sea sobbing at its month, while wary mariners, coasting in summer afternoons, catch glimpses of the tranquil and forbidden paradise, yet are heedless of all its beauty, and reck not the rustling of the cane-fields, nor the voices of the charmers, because--because these things are so common in that latitude that one grows naturally indifferent?
As for Felix, who talks in his sleep of the _hula-hula_, and insists that only by the _lomi-lomi_ he shall be saved, he points a moral, though at present he is scarcely in a condition to adorn any tale whatever; and the said moral I shall be glad to furnish, on application, to any sympathetic soul who has witnessed by proxy the unlawful revels of those night-dancers of Waipio.
The "Great Western" ducked in the heavy swell, shipping her regular deck-load of salt-water every six minutes. Now the "Great Western" was nothing more nor than a seventeen-ton schooner, two hours out from Tahiti. She was built like an old shoe, and shovelled in a head-sea as though it was her business.
It was something like sea life, wading along her submerged deck from morning till night, with a piece of raw junk in one hand and a briny biscuit in the other; we never _could_ keep a fire in _that_ galley; and as for hard tack, the sooner it got soaked through the sooner it was off our minds, for we knew to this complexion it must shortly come.
Two hours out from Tahiti we settled our course, wafting a theatrical kiss or two toward the gloriously green pyramid we were turning our backs on, as it slowly vanished in the blue desert of the sea.
A thousand palm-crowned and foam-girdled reefs spangle the ocean to the north and east of Tahiti. This train of lovely satellites is known as the Dangerous Archipelago, or, more commonly in that latitude, the Pomotou Islands. It's the very hotbed of cocoa-nut-oil, pearls, half-famished Kanakas, shells, and ship-wrecks. The currents are rapid and variable; the winds short, sharp, and equally unreliable. If you would have adventure, the real article and plenty of it, make your will, bid farewell to home and friends, and embark for the Pomotous. I started on this principle, and repented knee-deep in the deck-breakers, as we butted our way through the billows, bound for one of the Pomotous on a pearl hunt.