All around, with an air of imperfect wooden things inspired with wicked activity, the crabs trundled and scuttled into holes.

On the right, whither Attwater pointed and abruptly turned, was the cemetery of the island, a field of broken stones from the bigness of a child's hand to that of his head, diversified by many mounds of the same material, and walled by a rude rectangular enclosure.
Nothing grew there but a shrub or two with some white flowers; nothing but the number of the mounds, and their disquieting shape, indicated the presence of the dead.
'The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!' quoted Attwater as he entered by the open gateway into that unholy close.

'Coral to coral, pebbles to pebbles,' he said, 'this has been the main scene of my activity in the South Pacific.

Some were good, and some bad, and the majority (of course and always) null.

Here was a fellow, now, that used to frisk like a dog; if you had called him he came like an arrow from a bow; if you had not, and he came unbidden, you should have seen the deprecating eye and the little intricate dancing step.