messengers of day abroad; lictors with their fasces,
who fling themselves upon the world, and bid it prepare
in beauty for the coming of their lord. Strung along
the east, there is a chain of islands, each link a
mountain pyramid, the pale sea between crinkling with
the first breeze of the dawn.
The first familiar object that greets me is the
Marguerite s gig in the wake of the golden dawn ; the
crew in her fishing with lines. Far away in the distance
a ship is passing silently, like a phantom amongst the
islands.
I I I . A M o r n in g w i t h t h e S a l v a g e -M a n
Turning to look about me, I find that we are
at anchor in a small bay, which lies but half awake
in an arm of Bentinck Island. As the sun climbs, the
island turns a rich golden green, its beauty reflected
in the olive water. But for a wisp of yellow sand
along the sea-edge, its entire face is covered with woods
o f the finest character. Little valleys run down to
the sea ; a thousand birds are singing their unfamiliar
matins to the day, and trees with long white trunks
shine in the light, and break up the mass of foliage
into aisles, making the island seem like some Gothic
cathedral, wrought in an Oriental texture. A few paces
off lies the dishevelled wreck of the Amboyna, her
funnel, once black, now rust-red in the sea air.
I make my way on board, climbing with some effort
through the trenchant air, to the upper deck. Mr.
McPhairson in blue clothes cut all of a piece, like
t h e garments in
■which infancy is
wont to pass its
nights, is on board,
tanned and ruddy,
grizzled, large and
weighty of hand
and toot, smoked
glasses veiling his
small, blue, dogged
eyes.
“ You don’t notice
a smell?” he
asks—“ a kind of
effluvium ? ”
Candour a n d
courtesy conflict in
my mind.
I admit that I
d o . MCPHAIRSON.
“ Ah,” he replies, a little troubled upon the matter,
“ I was just wondering if it was away, or that I was
growing accustomed to it a bit.”
Half of her was under water. The fore-end of her
was out of the wet, and a Chinese carpenter was at
work drilling large holes in a plank. On the hurricane-
deck—the captain’s walk—the pumps were busy, and
the glass face of the indicator, like a ship’s clock,
showed the pressure under which a man was working
twenty feet below the level of the sea. A long tube