Island Nights’ Entertainments

THE BEACH OF FALESÁ.

CHAPTER I.
A SOUTH SEA BRIDAL.

I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon was tothe west, setting, but still broad and bright. To the east, and right amidshipsof the dawn, which was all pink, the daystar sparkled like a diamond. The landbreeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla: otherthings besides, but these were the most plain; and the chill of it set mesneezing. I should say I had been for years on a low island near the line,living for the most part solitary among natives. Here was a fresh experience:even the tongue would be quite strange to me; and the look of these woods andmountains, and the rare smell of them, renewed my blood.

The captain blew out the binnacle lamp.

“There!” said he, “there goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire,behind the break of the reef. That’s Falesá, where your station is, thelast village to the east; nobody lives to windward—I don’t knowwhy. Take my glass, and you can make the houses out.”

I took the glass; and the shores leaped nearer, and I saw the tangle of thewoods and the breach of the surf, and the brown roofs and the black insides ofhouses peeped among the trees.

“Do you catch a bit of white there to the east’ard?” thecaptain continued. “That’s your house. Coral built, stands high,verandah you could walk on three abreast; best station in the South Pacific.When old Adams saw it, he took and shook me by the hand. ‘I’vedropped into a soft thing here,’ says he.—‘So youhave,’ says I, ‘and time too!’ Poor Johnny! I never saw himagain but the once, and then he had changed his tune—couldn’t geton with the natives, or the whites, or something; and the next time we cameround there he was dead and buried. I took and put up a bit of a stick to him:‘John Adams, obit eighteen and sixty-eight. Go thou and dolikewise.’ I missed that man. I never could see much harm inJohnny.”

“What did he die of?” I inquired.

“Some kind of sickness,” says the captain. “It appears ittook him sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer andKennedy’s Discovery. No go: he was booked beyond Kennedy. Then he hadtried to open a case of gin. No go again: not strong enough. Then he must haveturned to and run out on the verandah, and capsized over the rail. When theyfound him, the next day, he was clean crazy—carried on all the time aboutsomebody watering his copra. Poor John!”

“Was it thought to be the island?” I asked.

“Well, it was thought to be the island, or the trouble, orsomething,” he replied. “I never could hear but what it was ahealthy plac

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