In the Strange South Seas |
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Common terms and phrases
afternoon Aitutaki Atiu Auckland bananas bath beach beautiful blue boat brown bush canoe captain cave certainly chief civilisation clothes cocoanut colour Cook Islands cool copra coral reef dance dark deck dinner dress Duchess Falefa Fangati feet fish flowers fruit geyser girls green hair half hand hour hundred kava kilt labour lagoon land lava-lava leaves live look lovely Makea Malden Island Manahiki Mangaia Maori mats miles missionary Mitiaro native never night Niué nuts once oranges Pacific palms pandanus Papeëte pareo passengers pearl Penrhyn pirate plaited pleasant queen Rakahanga Raratonga rock Rotorua round sail Samoan Savage Island scarlet schooner seen shark shell ship shore South Sea Islands steam steamer Tahiti Tahitian taupo things tinned Tinomana Tongan trade travellers trees tropic verandah village walk whole wild wind woman women wonder yellow Zealand
Popular passages
Page 9 - Smells are surer than sounds or sights To make your heart-strings crack — They start those awful voices o' nights That whisper, "Old man, come back!" That must be why the big things pass And the little things remain, Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg, Riding in, in the rain.
Page 8 - The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark.
Page 45 - The Protestant missionaries, with the best intentions in the world, carried things decidedly too far in the way of grandmotherly laws. Even white men were forbidden to be out of doors after eight o'clock at night, on pain of a heavy fine; and the offences for which the natives were fined would be incredible, were they not recorded in official reports. In Rarotonga of those days ... a native who walked at dusk along the road with his sweetheart . . . was obliged to carry a burning torch in his hand...
Page 15 - One exceedingly pretty girl, with a perfect cataract of black hair overflowing her pale green gown, and a pair of sparkling dark eyes that could never be matched outside the magic lines of Cancer and Capricorn, is making and frying pancakes with something fruity, nature unknown, inside them.
Page 243 - Two minutes and a half; it is barely possible now, but — the sentinel of death moves forward; his cruel eyes, phosphorescent in the gloom, look right into the cleft where the wretched creature is crouching, with almost twenty seconds of life still left, but now not a shred of hope. A few more beats of the labouring pulse, a gasp from the tortured lungs, a sudden rush of silvery air bubbles, and the brown limbs collapse down out of the cleft like wreaths of seaweed. The shark has his own.
Page 243 - ... a second how much time has passed ; the third minute is on its way ; but one goes up quicker than one comes down, and there is still hope. . . . Two minutes and a half ; it is barely possible now, but— the sentinel of death glides forward ; his cruel eyes, phosphorescent in the gloom, look right into the cleft where...
Page 164 - British shops — small brown ovals of little weight or size — and if one has never seen them growing, or heard them fall. But when one knows that the smallest nuts alone reach England (since they are sold by number, not by weight) and that the ordinary nut, in its husk and on its native tree, is as big as one's own head, and as heavy as a solid lump of hard...
Page 165 - ... one of which grows cocoanut palms by the thousand, in some cases, by the hundred thousand. Travellers are often a little nervous at first, when riding or walking all day long through woods of palm, heavily laden with ponderous nuts. But the feeling never lasts more than a few days. One does not know why one is never hit by these cannon-balls of...
Page 242 - Edgar Allan Poe ever conjure up a picture more ghastly than that of a Penrhyn diver, caught like a rat in a trap by some huge man-eating shark, or fierce kara mauaa — crouching in a cleft of the overhanging coral, under the dark green gloom of a hundred feet of water, with bursting lungs and cracking eyeballs, while the threatening bulk of his deadly enemy looms dark and steady, full in the road to life and air?
Page 25 - They are quite happy and uncomplaining, and manage to have a reasonably good time in a quiet way, but they will die out, and nobody can prevent them. You see, they are rather bored, and when you are bored, the answer to the question, " Is life worth living ? " is, at the least, debatable — to a Pacific Islander.