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great dark bosom of the sea, wandering fitfully this way and that, he might spot the incandescent glow of the under side of a distant cloud, and thus find a fiery star to steer by.
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    Large gannets and smaller terns skimmed across the waters leading to land, while frigate birds drew sharp and sure navigation lines from the turbulent ocean wastes right to the heart of the islands, where they nested. If a man in a canoe could spot a frigate bird, its cleft tail cutting the wind, he could be sure that land lay in the direction toward which the bird had flown at dusk.
    These beautiful islands, waiting in the sun and storm, how much they seemed like beautiful women waiting for their men to come home at dusk, waiting with open arms and warm bodies and consolation. All that would be accomplished in these islands, as in these women, would be generated solely by the will and puissance of some man. I think the islands always knew this.
    Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish.
    But if you come with growing things, and good foods and better ideas, if you come with gods that will sustain you, and if you are willing to work until the swimming head and the aching arms can stand no more, then you can gain entrance to this miraculous crucible where the units of nature are free to develop according to their own capacities and desires.
    On these harsh terms the islands waited.
    II
    From the Sun-Swept Lagoon
    I HAVE SAID that the islands along the rupture in the ocean floor were not a paradise, but twenty-four hundred miles almost due south there did exist an island which merited that description. It ky northwest of Tahiti, already populated with a powerful, sophisticated people, and only a few miles from the island of Havaiki, the political and religious capital of the area.
    It was Bora Bora, and it rose from the sea in sharp cliffs and mighty pinnacles of rock. It contained deep-set bays and tree-rimmed shores of glistening sand. It was so beautiful that it seemed impossible that it had arisen by chance; gods must have formed it and placed the bays just so, an illusion which was enhanced by the fact that around the entire island was hung a protecting necklace of coral on which wild ocean waves broke in high fury, trying vainly to leap inside the placid green lagoon, where fish flourished in abundant numbers. It was an island of rare beauty�wild, impetuous, lovely Bora Bora.
    Early one morning, while in Paris the sons of Charlemagne quarreled among themselves as to how their late father's empire should be ruled, a swift single-hulled outrigger canoe, sped along by sturdy paddlers and a triangular sail, swept across the open ocean leading from Havaiki and sought the solitary entrance to the lagoon
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    of Bora Bora, on whose shores a lookout followed the progress of the urgent canoe with dread.
    He saw the steersman signal his sailors to drop sail, and as they complied he watched the canoe pivot deftly in high swells that sought to crash it upon the reef. But with enviable skill the steersman rode with the swells and headed his canoe toward the perilous opening in the coral wall.
    "Now!" he shouted, and his paddlers worked feverishly, standing the canoe off from the rocks and speeding it into the channel. There was a rush of water, a rising of huge waves, and a swift passionate surge of canoe and flashing paddles through the gap.
    "Rest!" the steersman called quietly, in audible relief. Gratified with his minor triumph, he looked for approval to the canoe's solitary passenger, a tall gaunt man with deep-set eyes, a black beard, and long thin hands in which he clutched a staff