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Updated: May 20, 2025
The sun was low and the great heat past, the breeze had died away, and in the dewy stillness the largest of the islands looked unspeakably lovely as it lay in the golden light between us and the sun, forest-covered to its steep summit, its rocky promontories running out into calm, deep, green water, and forming almost land-locked bays, margined by shores of white coral sand backed by dense groves of cocoa-palms whose curving shadows lay dark upon the glassy sea.
You could tell by looking at her that Violet was the sort of person who would inevitably sleep out loud. "Hang me up in a tree or anywhere," I insisted, and it ended by my having a tarpaulin shelter rigged up in a group of cocoa-palms.
Bordering the beach were forest and undergrowth with interlacery of flowering vines. A ridge of rocks near by disclosed caves and hollows, some filled by the water of tinkling cascades. Oranges snowed in the branches of trees, and cocoa-palms lifted their heads high in the distance.
The trees were mostly cocoa-palms; indeed, scarcely any others could flourish in such a spot; and there were no shrubs or undergrowth of any kind. The cove was perhaps a hundred paces long, and half as wide in the widest part; contracting to less than fifty feet where it communicated with the lagoon.
A stiff, sun- dried cowhide was wet, then stretched and nailed to the gunwales at the bow, forming a sort of forward deck to shelter the sick man from the sun and rain. Jacket climbed the near-by cocoa-palms and threw down a plentiful supply of nuts for food and water on the voyage. With so many hands the work went fast, and late that evening the crazy craft was launched.
And suddenly she had fallen before me on the floor. “I belong you all-e-same pig!” she cried. I came on the verandah just before the sun rose on the morrow. My house was the last on the east; there was a cape of woods and cliffs behind that hid the sunrise. To the west, a swift cold river ran down, and beyond was the green of the village, dotted with cocoa-palms and breadfruits and houses.
So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm trees arm in arm with a pretty woman. Where would she come from? Oh, that's the miracle!
So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm-trees arm in arm with a pretty woman. Where would she come from? Oh, that 's the miracle!
The route lay along an arc of emerald and opal shore, the swaying cocoa-palms overhead, and native huts and missionary conventicles hidden away in coverts of ti-trees, hibiscus bushes, and limes; the sensuous, perfume- ladened air pervading all. I had seen the British flag from the coral- bulwarked harbour, but could not find it now.
Some ragged-topped cocoa-palms, glimpsed here and there, gave the land a tropical aspect. There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were some thousands of barrels containing that product which has carried the fame of Bermuda to many lands, the potato. With here and there an onion. That last sentence is facetious; for they grow at least two onions in Bermuda to one potato.
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