So far,so good.Here was certainly an atoll;and we were certainly got among the archipelago.But which?And where?The isle was too small for either Takaroa:in all our neighbourhood,indeed,there was none so inconsiderable,save only Tikei;and Tikei,one of Roggewein's so-called Pernicious Islands,seemed beside the question.At that rate,instead of drifting to the west,we must have fetched up thirty miles to windward.And how about the current?It had been setting us down,by observation,all these days:by the deflection of our wake,it should be setting us down that moment.When had it stopped?When had it begun again?and what kind of torrent was that which had swept us eastward in the interval?To these questions,so typical of navigation in that range of isles,I have no answer.Such were at least the facts;Tikei our island turned out to be;and it was our first experience of the dangerous archipelago,to make our landfall thirty miles out.
The sight of Tikei,thrown direct against the splendour of the morning,robbed of all its colour,and deformed with disproportioned trees like bristles on a broom,had scarce prepared us to be much in love with atolls.Later the same day we saw under more fit conditions the island of Taiaro.LOST IN THE SEA is possibly the meaning of the name.And it was so we saw it;lost in blue sea and sky:a ring of white beach,green underwood,and tossing palms,gem-like in colour;of a fairy,of a heavenly prettiness.The surf ran all around it,white as snow,and broke at one point,far to seaward,on what seems an uncharted reef.
There was no smoke,no sign of man;indeed,the isle is not inhabited,only visited at intervals.And yet a trader (Mr.Narii Salmon)was watching from the shore and wondering at the unexpected ship.I have spent since then long months upon low islands;I know the tedium of their undistinguished days;I know the burden of their diet.With whatever envy we may have looked from the deck on these green coverts,it was with a tenfold greater that Mr.Salmon and his comrades saw us steer,in our trim ship,to seaward.
The night fell lovely in the extreme.After the moon went down,the heaven was a thing to wonder at for stars.And as I lay in the cockpit and looked upon the steersman I was haunted by Emerson's verses:
'And the lone seaman all the night Sails astonished among stars.'
By this glittering and imperfect brightness,about four bells in the first watch we made our third atoll,Raraka.The low line of the isle lay straight along the sky;so that I was at first reminded of a towpath,and we seemed to be mounting some engineered and navigable stream.Presently a red star appeared,about the height and brightness of a danger signal,and with that my simile was changed;we seemed rather to skirt the embankment of a railway,and the eye began to look instinctively for the telegraph-posts,and the ear to expect the coming of a train.Here and there,but rarely,faint tree-tops broke the level.And the sound of the surf accompanied us,now in a drowsy monotone,now with a menacing swing.
The isle lay nearly east and west,barring our advance on Fakarava.