Low on the eastern horizon, straight outward from my beach, was the beginning and end of the great zodiac band--the golden Hamal of Aries and the paired stars of Pisces; and behind, over the black jungle, glowed the Southern Cross. But night after night, as I watched on the beach, the sight which moved me most was the dull speck of emerald mist, a merest smudge on the slate of the heavens,--the spiral nebula in Andromeda,--a universe in the making, of a size unthinkable to human minds. The power of my jungle beach to attract and hold attention was not only direct and sensory,--through sight and sound and scent,--but often indirect, seemingly by occult means. Time after time, on an impulse, I followed some casual line of thought and action, and found myself at last on or near the beach, on a lead that eventually would take me to the verge or into the water. Once I did what for me was a most unusual thing. I woke in the middle of the night without apparent reason. The moonlight was pouring in a white flood through the bamboos, and the jungle was breathless and silent. Through my window I could see Jennie, our pet monkey, lying aloft, asleep on her little verandah, head cushioned on both hands, tail curled around her dangling chain, as a spider guards her web-strands for hint of disturbing vibrations. I knew that the slightest touch on that chain would awaken her, and indeed it seemed as if the very thought of it had been enough; for she opened her eyes, sent me the highest of insect-like notes and turned over, pushing her head within the shadow of her little house. I wondered if animals, too, were, like the Malays and so many savage tribes, afraid of the moonlight--the "luna-cy" danger in those strange color-strained rays, whose power must be greater than we realize. Beyond the monkey roosted Robert, the great macaw, wide-awake, watching me with all that broadside of intensive gaze of which only a parrot is capable.