This was the island bathing-place, and here, all day long, men, women, and children were slipping and tumbling like seals in the creaming rollers. They shot deftly through the combers before they broke, and away out to sea, then came skimming back stretched flat on their swimming-boards, sitting on them, standing on them, marvels of grace and beauty, with shouts and laughter and life's tide at its fullest. It was their most rational enjoyment, and the finest possible outlet for their activities. It kept them healthy and it kept them clean. It also led to friction between the various factions, just as the taro fields had done. This was the only place available for surf-swimming for many miles on either side. Until the late troubles it had been common to all. Now the nearest dwellers, Ha'o's people and the atoll men, monopolised it, and when the others desired to join the sport they were received with taunts and jibes which came quickly to blows, and Blair had to adopt the _rôle_ of peacemaker once more. Ha'o and his men would have kept the others from the surf, just as they would have kept them from the taro swamps. But Blair would not have it. He reasoned with them, talked to them and at them, in a voluble mixture of Samoan, Kapaa'an, and English, and made them understand what he meant if many of his words were beyond them. In a pow-wow of this kind, when his feelings ran far in advance of his tongue, he could not wait for Matti's plodding interpretation, but dashed at it himself, and surprised and tickled his hearers with his white-hot vehemence. They were mighty arguers and had the advantage of the language, but he brought them to his will by sheer force of insistence. He had right on his side, and he would have them to it also. They grumblingly yielded the shore on certain days of the week, and Blair rejoiced in this further sign of growth and progress. Meanwhile, however, he knew that they were busily at work on the preparation of arguments of a more forceful description, and he had little hope of reaching his ultimate goal without these coming into use. So small a spark might set them all aflame that it was useless attempting to forecast it or to stifle it in advance. All he could do was to endeavour, by every means in his power, to build up among them the new influences which he and his friends represented, so that when the time came they should count as factors in the case.