It seemed to me in that moment that the entire atoll revolved rapidly in one direction while the mountain twirled in the other. Through my brain crashed a sequence of sickening pictures, the lepers of Molokai with their hideous affliction imported from China, the gaunt, coughing wrecks of Papeete, the scarecrows of Samoa—and now this!
And Whinney was right. We had done it; who individually, I know not, nor cared, but collectively we were guilty. Into this Eden, this Paradise in which I had never seen or heard of the slightest ailment, we, the prideful whites, had brought this deadly thing!
Should we remain, I dared not face the consequences.
"Is it... bad?" I managed to ask.
"Pretty," moaned poor Whinney. "Left knee, small of back... spreading."
"I'm going home," I said. "We'll meet here tomorrow afternoon at the same tune. If this thing develops" ...
I finished my sentence by diving overboard.
Early next morning I knew the worst. Daughter of Pearl and Coral was restless during the night. When the sun rose a single glance at her polished shoulders and my heart broke, never to be repaired. Folding her gently in my arms, I trembled in a paroxysm of grief.
We spent the entire day together, I in an agony of soul which I could not quite conceal and which my beloved tried to dispel by the tenderest tributes of her consuming love. I cannot speak more of what lies too deeply in my heart.
It was by the rarest good fortune that Dr. Traprock was able to secure what is probably the only living specimen now in captivity of the hitherto unknown fatu-liva bird. Immediately upon his arrival at Papeete efforts were made to secure a mother bird of any kind which would hatch out the four fatu-liva eggs then in the explorer's possession. Owing to their angular and uncomfortable shape it was found impossible to keep a bird brooding for more than three minutes at a time. After much effort one egg was finally hatched from which was derived the handsome specimen shown in the illustration. The youngster is now doing finely in the Bronx aviary. Unfortunately he is a male, so that his hope of posterity rests entirely upon the success of another expedition to the Filbert Islands.]