miles from the nearest Fiji group—a coral affair that reminded the young second of a hat, with palm trees for feathers; an exotic dot on the ocean. Over it hovered birds, and he heard Madame from the break of the poop, shrilly wondering how they had ever got there. She passed down a telescope to him. Under stilted, coco-nut-thatched dwellings lounged a dozen natives. They tried to launch a boat, but the breeze was fresh and the surf too heavy—surf which burst and sent licking pools of translucent emerald over a mile of deep pink seaweed.
To test the chronometers, the captain sailed as close as he dared, and, without warning, Paul yearned, as he had never yearned in his life, to be set ashore, that he might for ever remain on this spot of land "in which it seemèd always afternoon."
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam."
Most weary of all seemed the effort to live, the effort to project oneself into a troublesome future, the effort to go on exploring, the effort of knowing, of making decisions, of growing up. Once again his world stood still, and for an eternity he gazed on this little gem of creation. There one might retire, as into some cosy tomb, and the remainder of one's allotted span would be a siesta.
But the captain ordered him to swerve off towards a thousand miles of blankness, and as the wheel spun to the command of "La barre dessous, toute!" he dutifully wore ship, in the grip of a fearful nostalgia. To an old sail-maker he confided his mood, only to be argued down by rampant tales of the "Barbary Coast" in San Francisco—tales which filled him with laughing disgust and threw him back more passionately than ever on his hopeless longings.
