The silent birds gone, there came regularly before sunrise a wonderful mirage. Far away and low down in the distant seaward horizon there seemed vaguely shadowed forth long lines one above and behind the other of towers, walls, battlements, spires and the irregular outline of some weird ancient city. These shapes, seemingly motionless, in reality changed from minute to minute, yet the movement was not perceptible. Now it was a long level wall with an occasional watch-tower. Then the walls grew higher and higher, and there towered a lofty, round, cone-shaped structure, with a suggestion of a flight of circular steps on the outside, as in the old-fashioned Sunday-school books was seen pictured the tower of Babel. It would reveal itself in varying degrees of distinctness. But when the eye, attracted by some other feature of the spectacle, turned again in its direction it was gone. A haze of purple covered as with a gauzy veil these beautiful morning panoramas. Gazed at steadily it seemed as a dream realized in one’s waking moments. It was sometimes for me a sight fraught with dangerous fascination, and often as I looked upon it, forgetting all else for the moment, have I been recalled disagreeably to my mundane sphere of slops, soot, smoke and dish-rags, as I heard the ominous sizzle and splutter of the coffee boiling over, or scented on the morning air that peculiar odor, full of alarm to the culinary soul, the odor of burning bread in the oven. ’Tis ever thus that the fondest illusions of life are rudely broken in upon by the vulgar necessities and accidents of earthly existence. There were ten Sandwich Islanders in the forecastle of the _Henry_, one big Jamaica negro, who acted as a sort of leader for them, and no white men. These Kanakas were docile, well-behaved, could read in their own language, had in their possession many books printed in their own tongue, and all seemed to invest their spare cash in clothes. They liked fish, very slightly salted, which they would eat without further cooking, plenty of bread, and, above all things, molasses. Molasses would tempt any of these Islanders from the path of rectitude. When not at work they were either talking or singing. Singly or in groups of two or three they would sit about the deck at night performing a monotonous chant of a few notes. This they would keep up for hours. That chant got into my head thirty-three years ago and it has never got out since. Change of scene, of life, of association, increase of weight, more morality, more regular habits, marriage, all have made no difference. That Kanaka chant, so many thousand times heard on the Southern Californian coast, will sometimes strike up of its own accord, until it tires me out with its imagined ceaseless repetition. It’s there, a permanent fixture. Recollection will wake it up.