"Then let us try there;" and into the water we went, Li-li-noe first. It was not quite waist-deep, and in calm weather there would have been no danger, but now the current of the river and the tide of the inrushing sea swept back and forth with the force of a whirlpool. We had got to the middle when a great wave, white with foam, came roaring toward us from the ocean. Li-li-noe threw herself forward and began to swim. For a moment there were darkness and the roar of many waters around me, and my feet were almost swept from under me. Looking upward at the cloudy sky and the tall cocoanut trees on the bank, I thought of the home and friends I might never see again. The bitter salt water wet my face, quenched the light and carried away my shawl, but the wave returned without carrying me out to sea. Then above the noise of the waters I heard Li-li-noe's voice calling to me from the other shore, and just as another wave surged in I reached her side and sank down on the sand. After resting a few moments we rose and began picking our way toward the village, half a mile distant. Our route led along a narrow path between the muddy, watery road on one side and a still more muddy, watery taro-patch on the other. Without a light to guide our steps, we slipped, now with one foot into the road, now with the other into the taro-patch, and by the time we emerged into the level cactus-field around the church we were covered with mud to our knees. Pai-ku-li lived nearly a mile beyond the village, but close by the church lived Mrs. W----, whose place I had taken as English teacher in the school. We knocked at her door to beg for a light, and when she found what the matter was she made us come in, muddy and dripping as we were, and put on some dry clothes, while her husband, pulling on his boots, went for Pai-ku-li. She begged me to stay all night, saying that she would not trust her life with the girls at such a time--they might attempt to poison us or to burn the house down--but I thanked her for her hospitality and lighted our lantern, and we started back as soon as Mr. W---- returned saying that Pai-ku-li would come. We listened for the sound of his horse's feet, for we had planned to ride across the river, one at a time, behind Pai-ku-li, but he did not overtake us, and we waited at the river nearly half an hour. One span of the bridge remained, and as we stood on it waiting, listening to the flapping of the cocoanut fronds in the night wind and the hoarse murmuring and occasional roar of the ocean, I thought of that line of Longfellow's-- I stood on the bridge at midnight--