Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon this knifeblade, he is apt to reason within himself that it would be more comfortable if there were just an outrigger or so on the other side also.
I had the bow seat, and Billings sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, who occupied the stern of the craft and did the paddling.

With the first stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from the shore like an arrow.
There was not much to see.

While we were on the shallow water of the reef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the large bunches of branching coral--the unique shrubbery of the sea.

We lost that, though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep.
But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against the crag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air.
There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed with quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of the dilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of the restless sea.

When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned our eyes shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green forests stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of houses in the rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily at anchor.