"
It was seven o'clock in the evening when the rain ceased, and
one of the black, half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed at a
little low line on the horizon.
"Opeki," he said. The line grew in length until it proved to
be an island with great mountains rising to the clouds, and,
as they drew nearer and nearer, showed a level coast running
back to the foot of the mountains and covered with a forest of
palms. They next made out a village of thatched huts around a
grassy square, and at some distance from the village a wooden
structure with a tin roof.
"I wonder where the town is," asked the consul, with a nervous
glance at the fishermen. One of them told him that what he
saw was the town.
"That?" gasped the consul. "Is that where all the people on
the island live?"
The fisherman nodded; but the other added that there were
other natives further back in the mountains, but that they
were bad men who fought and ate each other. The consul and
his attache of legation gazed at the mountains with unspoken
misgivings. They were quite near now, and could see an
immense crowd of men and women, all of them black, and clad
but in the simplest garments, waiting to receive them.
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