Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/548

Rh authority, and one of them, with a spear thrust, destroys the great pearl. Jacob Eibsen then seems repossessed by a white man's soul, and returns to the spot long since abandoned by his kindred, and finds it occupied by English settlers, whose children's simple, child-like playmate he becomes, and remains till death. The plot is good; and it is always managed with a sober simplicity, which forms an excellent ground for some strong dramatic effects. The Australian scenery and air and natural life are every where summoned round the story without being forced upon the reader. Here, for instance. Is a picture at once vivid and intelligible,—which is not always the case with the vivid pictures of the word-painters. After the rains begin in that southern climate,—

Earth throbs and heaves With pregnant presience of life and leaves; The shadows darken 'neath the tall trees' screen, While round their stems the rank and velvet green Of undergrowth is deeper still; and there Within the double shade and steaming air, The scarlet palm has fixed its noxious root, And hangs the glorious poison of its fruit; And there, 'mid shaded preen and shaded light, The steel-blue silent birds take rapid flight From earth to tree and tree to earth; and there The crimsoned-plumaged parrot cleaves the air Like flying fire, and huge brown owls awake To watch, far down, the stealing carpet-snake Fresh-skinned and glowing in his charming dyes, With evil wisdom in the cruel eyes That glint like gems as o'er his head flits by The blue-black armor of the emperor-fly; And all the humid earth displays its powers Of prayer, with incense from the hearts of flowers That load the air with beauty and with wine Of mingled color. ..

"'And high o'erhead is color: round and round The towering gums and tuads, closely wound Like cables, creep the climbers to the sun, And over all the reaching branches run And hang, and still send shoots that climb and wind