“We came along up and found the place answering to all descriptions, lagoon about a mile wide, break to the east, good show of cocoanut trees and deep soundings all to north-east and south, with another island not bigger than the palm of your hand to west running out from a line of reef that joined with the beach of Utiali.
“If the place had been painted blue with the name in red on it, it couldn’t have been plainer.
“We came along to the eastward till we saw the opening, and got through without any bother just on the slack.
“It was a pretty place to look at. I’ve never seen a stretch of water that pleased me more than that lagoon; maybe it was the depth or something to do with the water itself, but it was more forget-me-not colour than sea blue, and where it was green in the shallows or the ship shadow, that green was brighter and different from any green I’ve ever seen.
“Maybe that’s why precious coral grew there, since the water colours were so clear and bright, the coral colours following suit would hit on new ideas, so to speak, but however that may have been, there was no denying the fact that Utiali was a garden, and the native houses on shore seemed the gardeners’ cottages—had that sort of innocent look.
“We dropped the hook close in shore on to a flower bed where you could see the sea anemones and the walking shells as clear as if there wasn’t more than two foot of water over them, and before the schooner had settled to the first drag of the ebb that was beginning to set, canoes began to come off with Kanakas in them.
II
“They came along paddling under the counter, waving their paddles to us, and then, having gone round us, like as if they were making a tour of inspection, they tied up and came on board, led by a big Kanaka Mary—a beauty to look at, with lovely eyes—Lord, I remember those eyes—who gave herself a bang on the chest with her fist and said ‘Tawela.’ That was how she presented her visiting card.
“We had a Kanaka with us who could talk most of the island tongues, and we put him on to Tawela to extract information from her and it came up in chunks.
“Tawela, by her own accounts, was anxious to trade anything from cocoanuts to her back teeth. She wanted guns and rum, which we hadn’t got, but she said she’d try to make out with tobacco and beads. She said she had plenty of pink coral, and would we come on shore and look at it, also would we come to dinner and she would give us the time of our lives.