By and by, as we paddled along, the sun began to get pretty hot, and we kept in as close as possible under the shade of the steep shores of the mainland. Overhead was a sky of matchless, cloudless blue, and sailing to and fro on motionless wing were numbers of tropic birds, their long scarlet retrices showing in startling contrast to their snow-white body plumage. All round about us turtle would rise every now and then, and taking a look at us, sink out of sight again. From the dense mountain forest, that earlier in the morning had resounded with the heavy booming note of the great grey pigeons and the cooing note of the little purple doves, not a sound now came forth, for the birds were roosting in the shade from the heat of the sun. Half a mile or so away, through a break in the chain of low islets, we could see the tumbling blue of the ocean, and over the tree-tops the white spume of the breakers as they leapt upon the iron-bound coast. We made fast our canoe to a jutting point of rock and rested awhile and smoked. The tide was on the flow, and as the water came swirling and eddying in from the great passage in the reef five miles away, there came with it countless thousands of fish of the mullet species, seeking their food among the mangrove creeks and flats that lay behind us. They did not swim in an orderly, methodical fashion, but leapt and spun and danced about as if thrown up out of the water by some invisible power beneath. Sometimes they would rise simultaneously, thousands at a time, and, taking a leap, descend again with an extraordinary noise. Then, quick as lightning, they would make three or four such leaps in succession with the regularity and precision of machinery. Hovering and fluttering above them on tireless wing were numbers of sea-birds, which ever and again darted down amongst them and rose with hoarse, triumphant note, prey in mouth. We lay resting quietly till the incoming tide had spent its strength, and then once more pushed out into the transparent depths of the lagoon. Bight ahead of us, after another hour's paddling, lay a long, gleaming point of sand covered with a grove of palms; beyond that a wide sweep of pale green shallow water; beyond that again the wild tumble and fret of the surf on the barrier reef. Laying down our paddles--for we were now in shallow water--we took up our three long canoe poles, and striking them on the hard, sandy bottom in unison we sent the canoe spinning round to the point, and as we rounded it there lay before us the brown roofs of the village of Leasse nestling under the shade of its groves. This was, as I have said, to be my home for many long but happy months. V