The heat is intense in this spot, overshadowed by the rocks and tangled masses of foliage.
At two o'clock, in the broad sunlight, we have a new and far prettier kind of invasion: that of the beetles and butterflies.
Butterflies as wonderful as those on the fans. Some all black, giddily dash up against us, so light and airy that they seem merely a pair of quivering wings fastened together without any body.
Yves astonished, gazes at them, saying in his boyish manner: "Oh, I saw such a big one just now, such a big one, it quite frightened me; I thought it was a bat attacking me."
A steersman who has captured a very curious specimen, carries it off carefully to press between the leaves of his signal-book, like a flower. Another sailor passing by, taking his small roast to the oven in a mess-bowl, looks at him funnily and says:
"You had much better give it to me. I'd cook it!"
August 24th.
It is nearly five days since I have abandoned my home and Chrysanthème.
Since yesterday we have had a storm of rain and wind—(a typhoon that has passed or is passing over us). We beat to quarters in the middle of the night to lower the top-masts, strike the lower yards, and take every precaution against bad weather. The butterflies no longer hover around us, but everything tosses and writhes overhead: on the steep slopes of the mountain, the trees shiver, the long grasses bend low as though in pain; terrible gusts rack them with a hissing sound; branches, bamboo leaves, and earth are showered down like rain upon us.