The Last Leg: From Med to Mum. V

I

No one had spoken for an hour or longer. We seemed to be floating, or, better, hanging suspended in a silence as wide as the sea, as deep as heaven itself. The breeze was so light that only by turning my ear in the direction from which it came could I be certain of a faint movement in the air; and yet the Hinaaro felt and answered to it. I could see a ghostly ripple, without a bubble on it, dividing at her stem, and when one of the sailors threw a drained coconut over the side, it glided gently away aft as though the power of movement were in itself, not in the cutter.

Of a sudden, while lying with vacant mind, staring into the sky, I seemed to be snatched away out of my body, and found myself lost in the depths of space, gazing in awe and dismay toward the sun as it shrank to the size of an orange, a pea, a grain of sand, a mote of shining dust, its satellites dwindling as rapidly with it. Yet I could still see the earth — its oceans, continents, islands, scaling down and down to infinitely less than microscopic proportions; and no array of belittling words or imaginative fractions of integers would serve to express how small the Pacific Ocean appeared, viewed from a receding point on the far side of Betelgeuse. Having been shown all this, I was again dropped, with the speed of thought, into the shell of my body, which lay in the same cramped position on the deck of the Hinaaro.

Voyagers in the eighteenth century, to say nothing of those of yet earlier periods, were not plagued with these scrambled points of view for which we twentieth-century folk have our astronomers to thank. I sometimes wonder whether our thanks should not be expressed in the coolest possible manner, by a mere polite lifting of an eyebrow, or a barely perceptible shrugging of the shoulders, when one of them insists upon enlarging our already more than adequate sense of the insignificance of the globe we inhabit. Why should we listen to these celestial prestidigitators who monopolize so much of our time, who distract our attention from our own proper affairs? How often do they break in upon our meditations, the quiet, comforting flow of our mundane thoughts! How often, in the silence of midnight, are we aroused from peaceful slumber by faint, far-carrying whoops and yells; and, rushing from our dwellings to learn the cause of the untimely clamor, we find that it comes from a distant mountain eyrie where we behold a group of tiny figures — astronomers and astrophysicists — bathed in a goblin-like, infra-red light, throwing hats, spectroscopes, and caution to the winds between the worlds in their excitement over some new discovery they have made, or think they have made. How can they be so sure, so soon? Or, if they are sure, why must they tell us about their findings?

In former times astronomers rarely disturbed common folk. They were content to remain in their watchtowers, conversing with one another in their weird mathematical language. But in our day they insist that we join their midnight orgies, and they so bemuse and befuddle us — and themselves as well, I often think — that days, if not weeks, pass before we recover from our debauches. They entice the unwary to their mountain fastnesses and there bewitch them with awe-inspiring instruments of magic; or, failing that, having translated some of their latest songs and legends into the vulgar speech, they rush down en masse and scatter among us books and pamphlets and other celestial propaganda which we are foolish enough to read. Whenever we see them coming we should do well, in my opinion, to draw our imaginative faculties in out of harm’s way, for they appear to think that ours, like their own, are of infinite elasticity. Give the gentlest of them an inch and he will take fifty million light years before you can draw breath to protest.

My musings were interrupted by Mr. Miller, who crawled over me to go to the cutter’s side. Returning, he wormed his way back into the place he had left, the impulse of his burrowings sending a succession of ripples, crested with a light foam of sighs, growls, and muttered curses, to the outer limits of our collective body.

‘Awake, Winnie?’ he asked.

Captain B—— grunted. ‘Do you

expect me to be asleep after you’ve stepped all over me?’

‘I’m as glad we’ve neither of our lady passengers with us,’ Mr. Miller proceeded. ‘We could n’t have managed any privacy for them, that’s certain. The best we could have done would have been to look the other way.’

This observation called for no confirmatory comment, and none was made.

‘We’d better shift Terii aft,’ Captain B—— said, presently. ‘We’re-down by the head with him in the bow.’

Terii, our three-hundred-pound cook, was, in fact, something of a problem in so small a boat. There was no place for him amidships, for, even when he lay flat, his stomach interfered with the swinging of the boom. If he sat aft, what with the others there, his additional weight gave the Hinaaro the appearance of a speed boat doing seventy-five miles an hour.

‘Hall, you’re skinny enough,’ said Mr. Miller. ‘Could n’t we fit you right forward, into the V against the stem ? ’

‘It’s the place I’ve coveted the whole voyage,’ I replied. ‘I’ll be that much nearer home.’

‘Good. We’ll sort ourselves over once more to-morrow. We may as well stay as we are for the rest of the night.’

II

The Hinaaro was a fine little craft, so alert, so sensitive to impulse that, as Captain B—— had said, failing a breeze, all we needed to do was to sigh or whistle for one in turn, and, with the air thus expended, she would get us home. But she was not built for the load she was carrying. There must have been well over a ton and a half of the Pro Patria’s former company on board, not counting Terii. We were, in fact, eighteen, precisely the number Captain Bligh had had, counting himself, in the Bounty’s launch on the voyage to Timor. Despite the fact that the Hinaaro was three feet and six inches longer and two feet beamier, we must have made an even tighter fit in our boat than they did in theirs; for, not only were we filled with good food, but we had food and to spare in reserve, as much as we could carry of the Pro Patria’s salvaged stores. Furthermore, our cutter was decked, and the temperature in what little unoccupied space there was below must have been 120 degrees Fahrenheit, even at night, for the only ventilation was by means of a two-by-two hole. We all preferred the topside, even in bad weather. We were fast eating our way into better accommodation, but there was still little enough room.

What would Captain Bligh and his men have thought of the amount of provisions we tucked away at a meal! I believe that we ate as much at a squeezed-together sitting as would have sufficed to carry them all the way to Timor. Often as I sat with my plate before me, heaped high with tinned beef and asparagus, boiled rice and ship’s biscuit, a picture of the Bounty’s launch at mealtime would gather into focus against the background of empty sea. I would behold seventeen bundles of skin and bone huddled in silent misery, their hollow eyes fixed on the eighteenth bundle, weighing out, in the improvised coconut-shell scales, just enough decayed ship’s bread — all of a year and a half old — to balance the pistol-ball counterweight: one twenty-fifth of a pound per man, with a quarter of a pint of waiter to wash it down. And I would hear Bligh’s voice, as the rations were passed from hand to hand: ‘Eat slowly, lads. Don’t take your bread at a bite. Do as I do: soak it in your water and make a meal of it.’ Then I would again become aware of the well-filled plate in my hand, and I would hear our Captain B—— say, his mouth filled with succulent tinned sausage or fine Columbia River salmon: ‘More rice, Hall? Where’s your appetite? You’re eating nothing to-day.’

If wishes could have had retroactive virtue in a time long past, Bligh’s men would have been well provisioned from our own more than abundant supplies. But, on second thought, their achievement seemed best as it stood. The splendor of it still gave light; it had been gathered into one of the fixed stars. Men in tight places, in desperate situations at sea, could always steer by it, gathering new hope and fresh courage as they did so.

We were in a tight place only in the sense of our fit into the cutter. Otherwise we had had nothing but good luck ever since leaving Manga Reva. But I have forgotten the loss of Terii’s rooster. He was blown overboard in a squall some days back. I had a last glimpse of him, his outspread wings supporting him for a moment as he rocked over the crest, of a wave. His attitude was still one of dismayed defiance; then he was lost to view in the scud and the blinding rain. There had been no possibility of retrieving him; we were too crowded to come about and row back in search. We mourned his loss as though he had been one of ourselves, as indeed he was. As Tepou said, we might better have lost our compass. There was much gloomy shaking of heads, and all the sailors believed that our good luck was now at an end. Nevertheless, it still held, or it had thus far.

The strength of our combined wishes may have had something to do with our progress. A little after noon, eight days after we had lost the rooster, we had sailed down the great lagoon and out of the pass at Hao. Hao, the Harp Island of Bougainville and the Bow Island of Cook, we were justified in considering our halfway point, for it lies about midway in the Cloud of Islands. At dawn the next morning we had passed Hikueru, the richest of the pearl islands, and, at dusk the same day, Haraiki. The following evening we had coasted within fifty yards of the reef enclosing the enormous lagoon of Anaa, or Chain Island.

We passed the southern end of Anaa; it was just at sunset, and I shall not soon forget the lonely beauty of the scene before us. We could look between the small islands, as we passed, into the lagoon. The long swells that swept under us ran high up the beaches, and a perpetual cloud of spray hanging between us and the green lands was shot through with golden sunset light. Birds were the only living creatures we saw. At this time one of our number, — myself, perhaps, — enchanted by the perfection of the present moment, must have broken the current of our westward-wishing thought. However that may be, the breeze became lighter and lighter until at last the flame of a match scarcely flickered in what remained of it. By that time we had lost sight of Anaa; Manga Reva was seven hundred miles astern, and little more than two hundred stretched between the Hinaaro and Tahiti. From my point of view on the far side of Betelgeuse, either distance was as the nth root of nothing, and we were already at home; had been there, in fact, before we started. Viewed with the eyes of sense, both were appreciable.

III

At dawn Terii shifted his bulk aft as far as the galley, a tin-lined box filled with sand. Although we had little more than steerageway, we seemed to smell from afar the dewy early-morning fragrance of Tahiti, and the talk was more than cheerful at breakfast. Nevertheless, I was a little uneasy about the water situation. We had left Hao with our fifty-gallon drum filled with fresh rain water and a five-gallon demijohn beside, a supply ample to see us through if all went well; but I did not like the cheerful assumption of Captain B—— and Mr. Miller and the rest of the company that all was bound to go well. Not that I believed in assuming the contrary; but, with eighteen of us aboard, it seemed foolish to me to make no allowance for possible emergencies. In the three days that had passed since leaving Hao, water had been siphoned down our thirsty gullets as generously as though a spring of it gushed up beneath the fifty-gallon drum. Every man could drink as much as he pleased, whenever he pleased. Captain Bligh would never have permitted that.

Breakfast over, we prepared for another hot and thirsty day. We made an awning by tying our bedquilts together, fastening one end to the boom and the other at the tow-rail. While this was being done I took the opportunity to measure the level of the water in the drum. It was more than half gone.

Mr. Miller and Captain Breceived the news with complete equanimity.

‘We’ve only two hundred miles to go,’ said one.

‘We’ll be tied up at the Papeete wharf in time for Sunday-morning coffee,’ said the other. ‘Don’t think about water, Hall. Think of the tall glass of ice-cold beer you’ll be enjoying at Bohler’s bar forty-eight hours from now.’

‘I was becalmed once in just such a cutter as this,’ I replied. ‘We lay within one hundred and fifty miles of Tahiti for ten solid days and nights. Luckily there were only five of us on board. Had there been eighteen, or ten, or six, for that matter . . . As it was, we’d been without a drop for eight hours when at last we got the breeze. We found that we’d drifted within fifteen miles of Makatea. The water I had there still seems to me the sweetest I’ve ever tasted.’

But my gentle hints had no effect upon my fellow voyagers. We toasted Tahiti in another quart each, but, secretly, I invoked Taaroa, one of the ancient gods of Polynesia, begging him, since he had endowed all those who have even a drop of Polynesian blood in their veins with such a childlike trust in luck, that he would not betray their trust because I happened to be on board the Hinaaro.

Those whose sea voyages are made in floating hotels know little of the majesty, the sublimity, of the element they cross with such ease. There is much to be said against cutter voyages from the point of view of comfort and expedition of travel, but as I sat on the Hinaaro with my feet dangling ankledeep in the water, — there were no sharks about, — nothing seemed to matter save the fact of being there.

We had a good mainsail, but the jib was patched over with flour sacks, and in the belly of it was one patch with the faded but still legible inscription: ‘Eventually — why not now?’ I found my contented, contemplative self reversing the legend for the benefit of my more impatient, movementloving self. ‘Now? Why not eventually?’ it asked. So the Hinaaro seemed to feel about the matter. There was a great swell from the south, with only the faintest breeze to wrinkle the surface of the mighty undulations over which we rode so smoothly. The backs of them were so broad that I could count ‘four,’ slowly, as they passed beneath us, and the valleys between must have been all of one hundred and fifty yards wide. ‘We’re favored, that’s certain,’ said Captain B——, who sat beside me. ‘There’s been some dirty weather down below; we’ve missed the lot of it.’

The confident statement was premature. Two days later the Hinaaro was again lying in a flat calm, but after having passed through a perceptible segment of dirty weather. Our jib, which we had nursed with the greatest care the whole voyage, was gone. Tatters of it were still festooned along the boltrope, and on one of the patched fragments that stirred languidly from time to time the words ‘not now’ could be read — a jeering comment upon our predicament. We had no forestaysail, and without a jib we were helpless. Being Polynesians, we had, of course, neglected to provide for such an emergency; so we lay there, well within view of Tahiti, as we believed, if only the sky would clear and permit of a view.

‘Matuku, rig the oars,’ said Mr. Miller.

We had a pair of fifteen-foot oars aboard, and with the help of these we proceeded, at the rate of about a mile and a half an hour, in what we believed was the direction of home. Captain B&emdash— was certain that we were at least forty-five miles offshore; Mr. Miller was much more sanguine. We had eight gallons of water left in the drum and the five in the demijohn.

I have rarely seen a more ominous-looking sky than that above us at this time. Great masses of greenish-black cloud hung so low that they seemed only a few yards above the mast, and the light that filtered through them was like that in a Doré drawing of the Day of Judgment. On the under surface of the clouds, rounded bubble-like projections sagged down here and there as though made heavier by the great weight of moisture they carried. The stillness was something beyond mere sound-lessness; the heat was stifling, and sweat streamed from the naked bodies of the men at the sweeps, though they were frequently relieved.

‘I’ve never seen more perfect waterspout weather,’ said Mr. Miller, cheerfully. ‘Hall, we’ll be able to fill the drum a thousand times over before we reach home.’

For an hour and more we crawled on like a disabled water spider over the glassy swell, the clouds thickening and darkening as we proceeded. Our voices sounded so large and shut-in between sky and sea that, without realizing it, we talked in subdued tones.

‘There’s nothing but water overhead,’ I remarked. ‘Not a sign of wind in those clouds.’

Captain B——nodded. ‘Wish some of it would fall,’ he said. ‘We’ll see nothing of Tahiti until it does.’

IV

Taaroa more than answered my supplication. The rain that fell within the next sixty minutes would have filled all the reservoirs, tanks, drums, and demijohns the world around. We could scarcely breathe in it, and yet there was not the slightest movement of air save that churned into froth by the falling water itself. It slackened at last, and with a splendid spectacular effect the horizon line moved swiftly outward as though we lay at the centre of a bubble being blown out to enormous size. Here and there vast curtains of rain still hung suspended, but all were lightening perceptibly, and against one of them, with faint sunlight glinting on their wings, a throng of sea birds circled and dived and flapped hastily this way and that, while the water beneath them was churned white by a school of fish.

‘Look!’ said Mr. Miller, triumphantly. ‘We’re close in with the land, that’s certain! ’

I was about to reply when one of the men gave a joyous shout: ‘ E poti! ’ We all turned our heads in the direction he pointed, and saw a small motor launch which had just emerged from a wide curtain of rain. One man sat forward, steering and driving the engine, while his two companions stood aft, plying their eighteen-foot rods of stiff bamboo. Up went the rods simultaneously, derricking a pair of big tunas out of the sea; up once more, and again and again.

Our rowers ceased their work at the sweeps, and all the Hinaaro’s company, forgetful of our predicament, watched this congenial spectacle with glistening eyes. Every native is a keen sportsman and an equally keen merchant so far as fish are concerned. They were calculating mentally, and sometimes aloud, how much these fine tunas would fetch in next morning’s market in Papeete. Not a glimpse did we have of Tahiti, nor did any of us speak of it. We knew that the launch would not be more than fifteen or twenty miles offshore. Our voyage was all but ended.

The tunas must have found an immense school of young mullet or other small fry, for they remained stationary for a long time, while the birds overhead fed ravenously and the launch plied back and forth in their midst. No man in her paid the slightest attention to us as we drew near, and it was not until the tunas sounded, with the abruptness of their kind, that the launch turned and steered for us. She came close alongside. We all knew the men in her and they knew us. They knew that we were the Pro Patria’s company; that we had gone off, months ago, in an eighty-ton schooner and that we were returning in a five-ton cutter; but it is not etiquette in Polynesia to show surprise; furthermore, mishaps at sea are too common for an additional one to give rise to much comment. The steersman waved a casual hand.

‘Nofea mai outou?‘ he inquired.

‘From Hao,’ said Mr. Miller. ‘How far are we offshore?’

‘Fifteen miles, perhaps.’

‘Éaha te parau api?’ (What’s the news at Papeete?)

The man reflected for a moment.

‘ Aita hoé,’ he replied. (Not one.)

The Pro Patria had left Tahiti the middle of August, and November was now well along. And yet not even one news had happened since we left! I smiled, inwardly. How typical that was of Tahiti! One could go away for three months, six months, six years, and, coming back, find everything about as it was upon leaving.

‘How’s my family, Tihoti?’ I asked. He grinned. ‘All well. I saw the three of them in town yesterday.’

‘Will you give us a tow in?’ Mr. Miller asked. ‘We’ll make it worth your while.’

Tihoti pondered this suggestion for a bit, and then talked it over with his companions. One of them sprang up suddenly and looked to the north. A cloud of birds in that direction showed that the fish had reappeared, about a mile away. Tihoti sprang to his seat, forward. As he threw in his clutch, he shouted a single word to us over his shoulder: ‘Hieru!’ — and away they went. This word might be translated ‘presently,’ ‘by and by,’ or even ‘one of these days.’

For all my years in Polynesia, I still suffer, occasionally, from my old illusion that time has value. I was dismayed at the prospect of waiting, but none of the others were. All hands eagerly watched the fishing each time we rose to the swell. Noon passed, and early afternoon, and still no wind stirred, though rain fell heavily again, everywhere save on us. The launch had long since disappeared, and we were rowing once more.

Then at last we saw Tahiti. Little by little, as the rain squalls melted away, the dark-green windward coast was revealed with its deep valleys and waterfalls and wooded cliffs, all gloriously fresh and vivid in the soft gray light. We were about twelve miles off the coast of Hitiaa district, but a good thirty-five miles from Papeete harbor. It may be that Bougainville had his first view of Tahiti in the same light, with the higher mountains hidden by cloud save where an occasional jagged peak pushed its way through into the clear air above. How his land-famished men must have stared at the sight as he sailed his ship through the break in the reefs that still bears the name of Boudeuse Passage and cast anchor in the Bay of Hitiaa!

V

We were bound for Papeete, and we resolved to go on even though we should have to row the entire distance round the coast. We crawled in, nearer land, so that we might catch the hupé — the night breeze that flows down the valleys from the interior after set of sun. We could manage in a fashion without our jib, and be at home, very likely, before noon of the next day.

But Tihoti and his men had not deserted us. A little after sunset we caught sight of the launch, a long way off. We knew, now, there would be no more ‘Hieru!‘ They would be as eager as ourselves to get home. The chugging of the launch grew louder, and presently they were alongside with a splendid load of fish.

‘How many?’ Terii sang out.

‘Two hundred and seventy and three.’

‘All tuna?’

‘É. Not a bonito in the lot. Throw us your line.’

What a relief it was to be moving again! For all the load of us aboard, the cutter towed pretty well; and presently a fine squall struck us, so that, with our mainsail receiving the full force of it, the launch had all it could do to keep ahead of us. But this good luck was only of about ten minutes’ duration. We then settled down to a much more leisurely pace.

The eighteen of us sat facing the land, absorbing the beauty of it with all our senses and through the pores of our skin. We were too deeply content for much talk. Mr. Miller broke a long silence to say, ‘I suppose I must have come back to Tahiti from at least five hundred voyages, and if I were to have five thousand more I should not be tired of seeing what we see now.’

‘She’s the first ship I’ve ever lost,’ said Captain B——. He was still thinking of Timoe and the Pro Patria.

‘Now, Winnie, that’s enough!’ said Mr. Miller. ‘Look up Mahaena Valley and be glad you’re alive to see it. Hall, are you going home as soon as we land?’

‘What do you expect me to do?’ I asked. ‘Rush off boating again before I’ve seen my wife and children?’

‘No, but I ’ll tell you what we should do, you and Winnie and I. We won’t be in until nearly daylight, and our families will all be asleep. They don’t know that we are within five hundred miles of Tahiti. Let’s let them have their night’s rest. We can go to earlymorning market for our coffee and anticipate a bit. It will make going home all the better.’

Mr. Miller is an artist at living; he knows how these things should be arranged. Captain B—— and I both agreed that his suggestion could not be bettered.

The fishermen lit their port and starboard lights and hoisted an oldfashioned dashboard lantern to their masthead. By the light of yet another they were cleaning their fish — not slitting the bellies open as white men do, but removing the entrails through a small hole cut in the fish’s side. The hearts and livers were saved, and, as each tuna was cleaned, it was held over the side for a moment to wash the blood away. As the fish were cleaned they were tied in pairs by the tails with strips of bark, of which a great bundle lay on the cockpit floor, and then hung over light wooden frames, ready to be carried to market.

We had seen the fishermen enjoying a course of hors-d’œuvre — raw tuna hearts. Afterward they grilled a heap of tuna livers on the exhaust manifold of the engine, which was square, and very hot. Having cooked a lot of these, salted and dusted with pepper, they wrapped bundles of them in banana leaves, slackened speed until the cutter came alongside, and tossed this most welcome supper across to us. Every man had a good feed of them; then we proceeded on our way.

We were abreast of Point Venus light about 2 A.M. The sky was now bright with stars, and here in the lee of the land we glided smoothly along at four knots. We crossed the shoals of the Dolphin Bank where Captain Wallis’s ship, Dolphin, struck and was nearly lost, in 1767, when white men laid eyes for the first time on Tahiti. Here was Matavai Bay, where Wallis and Cook and Bligh had anchored in turn. I could make out, in the starlight, the shadowy heights of OneTree Hill, where, in Captain Cook’s day, men with flaming torches had been stationed ten feet apart to light the rocky path for the great chief, Pomare. We did not enter the Toaroa Passage, for the inside channel to Papeete is too tortuous to follow in the dark. Yet the Bounty’s men had towed their bluff-bowed old ship through this narrow pass and moored her, not far from the entrance, where she lay while the breadfruit trees were being gathered.

But what interested me more at the moment than the site of the Bounty’s former anchorage was the present site of the home of one James N. Hall. We were not far offshore; I could see the dark shadow of the land, but there were no lights showing against it. The district of Arué was asleep, and had been for many hours.

We passed Pirae and Taunoa and felt the cool weight of air flowing like water from the recesses of the great gorge of Fautaua. Then the scattered lights of the little sleeping town came into view, and when the two beacon lights fell into line we turned sharply and headed into the Papeete passage. The moon was setting, and in its last light I could see the line of schooners moored along the wall of the Quai de Commerce. The engine of the launch slowed down and began to idle with the clutch pulled out. Losing way slowly, the cutter moved on toward the sea wall. An old native fishing dreamily there took the line we threw to him and drew us along to a convenient place for mooring. We made fast and the eighteen of us clambered stiffly ashore. ‘Well, here we are,’ said Mr. Miller. ‘Now, then, how about some of Drollet’s good hot coffee?’

VI

The water front slept in profound silence, but at the market all was noise and bustle. Chinese carts, with lanterns clamped to the dashboards, came rattling in with the day’s supply of vegetables. Tethered pigs grunted and squealed, ducks quacked, and roosters crowed in their crates. I was glad to observe that there was no glut of fish in that morning’s market. A small crowd gathered about the load of fine tuna Tihoti and his mates were now hanging up for display. No sales would be permitted till the policeman rang his bell at half-past five.

The lights were bright and there was the usual air of good cheer in Drollet’s coffee shop. Mr. Miller, Captain B——, and I took our places at one of the small tables looking across the market place. The sky above the line of twostory Chinese restaurants on the east side was brightening with dawn, and the figures of passers-by grew momentarily more distinct. Old Maître Legrande, the barrister, passed by, his market basket over his arm; you could rate a chronometer by the moment of his arrival at the market place. A two-seated carriage of the 1890 epoch drew up in front of Drollet’s, and Madame Durant stepped out as she had done every morning for the past forty years. Wizened little Ah Pau, who has provided my family with vegetables ever since I have had a family, waved at me from his creaking cart, and Polypheme, a large, mournful, one-eyed dog, appeared on his morning round. He touched my leg with his nose, caught in mid-air the bit of sausage I tossed to him, and moved on to the next benefactor. His visit at the coffee shop was timed as precisely as the arrival of Monsieur Legrande.

It was good to be at home. I realized more clearly than ever before how deep was the affection I felt for this little tropical town where nothing ever changes. If a photograph had been taken of the market place in Tahiti from the door of Drollet’s coffee shop on the day of my first arrival at Tahiti in 1920, and another on the morning of the return of the Pro Patria’s company in 1933, the second might have been perfectly superimposed upon the first. A composite photograph made of the two would show nothing out of focus; even Polypheme would have been in his place; or, if not the present Polypheme, another precisely like him.

A thirteen-year-old Ford car passed at a snail’s pace. Tané, the driver, caught my eye, grinned, and motioned with his thumb, questioningly, in the direction of Arué, three miles distant. I nodded and the car shuddered to a full stop.

‘Do you think you could get me home, Tané?’ I asked.

‘I’ve done it enough times,’ he replied. ‘Guess I can make it once more if you’re not in too big a hurry.’

‘He’s in no hurry at all,’ Mr. Miller put in as I wrenched open the battered door. ‘Take your time, Tané; take your time.’

(The End)