Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/264

214 on my face. It was a tiny thing, a fairy isle foating in those blue seas all by itself. It had everything an island should have—little curving sandy bays, green trees, a tiny house with palms waving over it, a little cliff—in fact it was a poem! Who could live on it, or have thought of building a house there? In but a few minutes it was a mere speck on the sea.

That infernal cockatoo gives us no peace. It has been uncontrollable lately; and torn us to pieces. I came along the deck one day to see it on a rope which stretched from the yard-arm to our high deck. It was half-way along this, upside down, and hanging by one claw. If it let go it must drop into the sea. On the deck below stood the three Chinese and two German stewards, all their silly faces lifted in consternation as they tried to entice it to come down with bits of sugar and cake and much crying of “Cockay, preety Cockay!” but the wretch still hung on by one claw in the most absurd manner. At last I was about to unloose the rope and draw it across the ship so that if the bird did fall it would be on deck; but it saw at once, came along quite coolly, and on reaching the deck turned round, deliberately winked at me, and strutted down the deck convulsed with mirth and talking away at a great rate. I really wonder who that bird was in some former life? They say I spoil it, but they surely mean it spoils me, or what it has left of me, for I have not a square inch of unspoilt flesh about me.

Out at sea an empty canoe passed us. Somehow it looked so lonely that I bent over the side and called to it, “Where are you going, little ship, little ship; oh, where are you going?” But there was no answer, and in silence it passed on into the unknown. Then I was sad, for some-