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We made the eastern side of the island at daylight, and coasted along its palm-fringed shores all day. I had been very unwell for some days past, but this delightful indication of our near approach to the land seemed to do me good at once. If only the interior is as beautiful as what we can see from the deck of the yacht, my expectations will be fully realised, brilliant as they are.
And on the left, far out at sea, her purple heights and palm-fringed shores deepening the exquisite blue of the Caribbean by day, a white ever changing spirit in the twilight, and no more vestige of her under the stars than had she sunk whence she came Nevis.
We steamed down the Klang river, and then down a narrow river-like channel among small palm-fringed islands which suddenly opened upon the sea, which was slightly green toward the coral-sanded, densely wooded, unpeopled shores, but westward the green tint merged into a blue tint, which ever deepened till a line of pure, deep, indescribable blue cut the blue sky on the far-off clear horizon.
We, meanwhile, lay off the low, palm-fringed beach, our crew lying on their oars, or giving way just enough to keep the boat's head to the breakers. The mate and myself sat in the stern sheets, looking shoreward for the signal. The night was intensely black. Perhaps for this reason never before had I seen the phosphorescence of a tropical sea so strongly marked.
From the centre of its sun-scorched Esplanade rises the bronze figure of a youthful, slender, clean-cut, keen-eyed man, clad in the high-collared coat and knee-breeches of a century ago, who, from his lofty pedestal, peers southward, beyond the shipping in the busy harbor, beyond the palm-fringed straits, toward those mysterious, alluring islands which ring the Java Sea.
Owing to the very limited extent of the island, the ocean may be seen at the end of every street and from almost every point of view, and its constantly changing but always unfamiliar color says to you at every hour of the day: "You are no longer looking out upon the dull, muddy green water of the Atlantic coast; you are on a tropical, palm-fringed coral reef in the remote solitude of the great South Sea."
A sado, with a team of three tiny ponies, dashes up the long avenue leading to the palm-fringed hills, the mighty Amherstia trees forming aisles of dark green foliage, brightened with the vivid glow of orange red blossoms. The broad road is a kaleidoscope of brilliant colour, for native costume vies with the dazzling tints of tropical Nature as we advance further into the Preangers.
Ships of archaic form, with banks of rowers; palm-thatched huts built on piles, in the unchanging fashion of the Malay races; graceful bedayas, the Nautch girls of Java, performing the old-world dances still in vogue; and women with lotahs on their heads, passing in single file to palm-fringed tanks, might be represented with equal truth in this twentieth century.
Never again can she stroll with her lover in the fragrant twilight on the palm-fringed banks of the Mekong. Never again can she leave the precincts of the palace, save to accompany the King. The bars behind which she dwells are of gold, it is true, but they are bars just the same.
But, though they were entranced with the grandeur and charm of its scenery its towering cliffs, leaping cascades, and green, palm-fringed flat land of the coast Papeete did not treat them well, and their old enemy, which had forgotten them for some happy months, again found them out there and Louis had a severe relapse, with a return of the hemorrhages.
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