At Apia the harbour lights showed through the gaunt skeleton of the Adler, and just outside the roadstead of Levuka my attention was drawn to all that was left of an East Indiaman.
If the coral could but speak what tales might it not tell of poor, drenched, fordone humanity, clutching with bleeding hands at what was so cruel and so inexorable—now sucked back by the indrawn breath of the waves, and now flung remorselessly forward on to the beautiful, bared teeth of the reef, until Death, more merciful than Life, put an end to their sufferings.
As we passed the reef I noticed that the vivid blue within the natural harbour was separated from the “foamless, long-heaving, violet ocean” without, by a submarine rainbow.
Every colour was here represented and every gradation of colour. It looked as if the sun were shining below the water through the medium of some hidden prism.
“Is it always beautiful like this?” I asked one of my friends on board who had spent many years in these parts, and who with eyes intently gazing shoreward, stood beside me on the upper deck.
“Always,” was the prompt reply, “at least, I have never seen it otherwise. Looks like a necklace of opals, does it not?”
“I have been waiting for that question, and it’s a difficult one to answer. I should say it was due to the difference of depth at which the patches of coral, seaweed, and white sand are to be found, and the effect of the sunshine on them through the clear, shallow, greenish water that covers the irregular surface of the reef. The shades of colour vary with the ebb and flow of the tide. I’ve seen it through a golden haze, and I’ve seen it through a violet haze, but always with these prismatic colours; it is at its very best at noontide. If you look over the side of the steamer you will see how the colours lie, not on the surface, but below the water—the deeper you can see, the more varied and intense the colour.”
On landing at Levuka it needed no one to tell us that desolation in the form of a hurricane had recently swept over the island. The ruined church confronted us, with ruined houses, and toppled over palms, the entire beach was strewn with broken shells, rainbow-coloured fragments of departed loveliness. We landed and took a nearer survey of the disaster. At the little noisy wharf crowds of natives pressed goods on us for sale, among them being lovely baskets of coral, conch shells, sulu’s and tapa. The Roman Catholic church had escaped, as by a miracle, for all around it were fallen palms. We entered and admired the inlaid (native) wood-work, and the beautiful pink shell, on a carved wooden stand, that served as a font.
