South Sea Tales

Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in the lightbreeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just outside the suck ofthe surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a circle of pounded coralsand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in circumference, and from three tofive feet above high-water mark. On the bottom of the huge and glassy lagoonwas much pearl shell, and from the deck of the schooner, across the slender ringof the atoll, the divers could be seen at work. But the lagoon had no entrance foreven a trading schooner. With a favoring breeze cutters could win in through thetortuous and shallow channel, but the schooners lay off and on outside and sentin their small boats.