第53章 FAKARAVA:AN ATOLL AT HAND(2)

Not a soul was to be seen.But for the thunder of the surf on the far side,it seemed you might have heard a pin drop anywhere about that capital city.There was something thrilling in the unexpected silence,something yet more so in the unexpected sound.Here before us a sea reached to the horizon,rippling like an inland mere;and behold!close at our back another sea assaulted with assiduous fury the reverse of the position.At night the lantern was run up and lit a vacant pier.In one house lights were seen and voices heard,where the population (I was told)sat playing cards.A little beyond,from deep in the darkness of the palm-grove,we saw the glow and smelt the aromatic odour of a coal of cocoa-nut husk,a relic of the evening kitchen.Crickets sang;some shrill thing whistled in a tuft of weeds;and the mosquito hummed and stung.There was no other trace that night of man,bird,or insect in the isle.The moon,now three days old,and as yet but a silver crescent on a still visible sphere,shone through the palm canopy with vigorous and scattered lights.The alleys where we walked were smoothed and weeded like a boulevard;here and there were plants set out;here and there dusky cottages clustered in the shadow,some with verandahs.A public garden by night,a rich and fashionable watering-place in a by-season,offer sights and vistas not dissimilar.And still,on the one side,stretched the lapping mere,and from the other the deep sea still growled in the night.But it was most of all on board,in the dead hours,when I had been better sleeping,that the spell of Fakarava seized and held me.The moon was down.The harbour lantern and two of the greater planets drew vari-coloured wakes on the lagoon.From shore the cheerful watch-cry of cocks rang out at intervals above the organ-point of surf.And the thought of this depopulated capital,this protracted thread of annular island with its crest of coco-palms and fringe of breakers,and that tranquil inland sea that stretched before me till it touched the stars,ran in my head for hours with delight.

So long as I stayed upon that isle these thoughts were constant.Ilay down to sleep,and woke again with an unblunted sense of my surroundings.I was never weary of calling up the image of that narrow causeway,on which I had my dwelling,lying coiled like a serpent,tail to mouth,in the outrageous ocean,and I was never weary of passing -a mere quarter-deck parade -from the one side to the other,from the shady,habitable shores of the lagoon to the blinding desert and uproarious breakers of the opposite beach.The sense of insecurity in such a thread of residence is more than fanciful.Hurricanes and tidal waves over-leap these humble obstacles;Oceanus remembers his strength,and,where houses stood and palms flourished,shakes his white beard again over the barren coral.Fakarava itself has suffered;the trees immediately beyond my house were all of recent replantation;and Anaa is only now recovered from a heavier stroke.I knew one who was then dwelling in the isle.He told me that he and two ship captains walked to the sea beach.There for a while they viewed the on-coming breakers,till one of the captains clapped suddenly his hand before his eyes and cried aloud that he could endure no longer to behold them.This was in the afternoon;in the dark hours of the night the sea burst upon the island like a flood;the settlement was razed all but the church and presbytery;and,when day returned,the survivors saw themselves clinging in an abattis of uprooted coco-palms and ruined houses.

Danger is but a small consideration.But men are more nicely sensible of a discomfort;and the atoll is a discomfortable home.

There are some,and these probably ancient,where a deep soil has formed and the most valuable fruit-trees prosper.I have walked in one,with equal admiration and surprise,through a forest of huge breadfruits,eating bananas and stumbling among taro as I went.