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remained; and the mind of the dying bachelor went back some sixty years to claim perhaps the affectionate aid of her at whose knees he had lisped his first 'Our Father.'

Late on a Sunday night, the doctor and myself knelt beside my long-suffering friend. Above us was the starry sky, rendering hardly needful the candle lantern. We had been in attendance some hours, for we knew instinctively that the end was at hand. The glassy eyes hardly moved; the pale thin hands were laid out passively before him; the wan cheeks were wet with the dews of death.

'Cooper,' said the doctor, 'see the exact time by the chronometer.'

As I got up, watch in hand, to enter the saloon, the first stroke of eight bells resounded through the midnight air, and the patient's head fell gently on his breast.

He had gone on a long journey; he had gone to meet his God.

Again the tolling bell, again the sail-shrouded corpse at the port gangway; once more the words, 'I am the resurrection and the life;' once more the committal of corruption to the sea, and murmuring the touching antiphon of the De Profundis as sung by the Latin Church, I prepared for the last few days of the homeward trip.

Some little time after our last sad burial, I visited the Floriana of Malta, and a day or so later the Galleries of' Gib.'

The stem of our good ship was now cleaving the water direct for England, and notwithstanding some

VOL. II.

22

very heavy weather which we encountered after passing that spot so sacred to men of our race-Trafalgar— we were (sad memories apart) rejoicing in the big waves around us, for the same sea also rolled on the shores we loved so well.

My thoughts went back to Wai-Wai in distant Savu Savu Bay, Fiji, as the lights of Ushant beamed across the angry sea, and I told my friends on board that from

'Ushant to Scilly is forty-five leagues.'

Before the deaths in the saloon, we often used to sing, to the accompaniment of a Brinsmead piano, the wellknown song of the returning colonist :

'Though our steps are homeward-bound, still fond memory lingers yet,

With the dear friends left behind us, whom we never can forget, Who have cheered us while in distant lands our lot has been to

roam,

And have joined us in our musings and our happy dreams of home.'

One evening, while reflecting over this verse, and on the kind faces and brave, manly hearts that I had (for a time only, I hope) left in the fair region of Coral Lands, I heard a voice, 'Start Point on the port bow,' and I knew

'Now the first land we made it is called the Dead Man,

Next Rame Head near Plymouth, Start Point, Isle of Wight;'

and I went below to pack up.

Next morning I was told by a friend to 'get up and see the Needles,' to which request I truthfully, but lazily, replied that I had seen them before.

I could not have given the guardians of her Majesty's Revenue at Southampton Docks much trouble with my cannibal forks and shark-teeth swords; but there were other passengers besides myself, and it was quite one p.m. before I could ask for a single' ticket to Waterloo.

A few hours later I watched with my mother, from the home of my boyhood, Hampstead Heath, the last rays of sunlight illumine the Hertfordshire Hills.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE LANGUAGES OF POLYNESIA.

In an exhaustive paper entitled the ' Ethnology of the IN Pacific,' the Rev. S. J. Whitmee thus describes the three great varieties of speech which are used by the races in Coral Lands-Papuan, Sawaiori, and Tarapon:

'The following are the broad characteristics of the Papuan languages Consonants are freely used, some of the consonantal sounds being difficult to represent by Roman characters. Many of the syllables are closed. There is no difference between the definite and indefinite article, except, perhaps, in Fiji. Nouns are curiously divided into two classes, one of which takes a pronominal affix, the other which never takes an affix. The principle of this division appears to be a near or more remote connection between the possessor and the thing possessed. Those things which are connected with a person, as the parts of his body, etc., take the pronominal affix. For example, in Fijian the word luve means either a son or a daughter, one's child, and it takes the possessive pronoun before it; as nona ngone, his child, i.e., his

to look after or bring up. Gender is only sexual. Many words are used indiscriminately as nouns, adjectives or verbs, without change, but sometimes a noun is indicated by its termination. In most of the languages there are no changes in nouns to form the plural, but a numeral indicates number. Case is shown by particles which precede the nouns. Adjectives follow their substantives. Pronouns are numerous, and the personal pronoun includes four numbers, singular, dual, trinal, and general plural, also inclusive and exclusive. Almost any word may be made into a verb by using with it the verbal particles. The differences in these particles in the various languages are very great. In the verbs there are causative, intensive, frequentative, and reciprocal forms.'

in

In regard to the peculiarities of the Sawaiori language, I condense Mr. Whitmee's remarks. With one exception (as I have already remarked my introductory chapter) all the sounds found in them may be expressed by the Roman letters, with their ordinary values. This exception is a sound which we call a break; a kind of a pause in the breath, which is between an aspirate and a k. A k sound takes its place in some of the languages. In those languages in which this sound occurs we usually write it by an inverted comma, as in the name Hawai'i. The vowel sounds are all simple, as in Spanish. Every syllable is open. To this there is no exception. Some words consist entirely of vowels. Phonetic changes have taken place according to law, so that a given word in one language may have its form in any other language, if it be found in it predicated. As a