Explore "The Call of the South" by Louis Becke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Nine years had come and gone since I had last seen Nukutavake and its amiable brown^skinned people, and now as I again stepped on shore and scanned the faces of those assembled on the beach to meet me, I missed many that I had loved in the old, bright days when I was trading in the Paumotus. For Death, in the hideous shape of small-pox, had been busy, taking the young and strong and passing by the old and feeble.
It was a Sunday, and the little isle was quiet -- as quiet as the ocean of shining silver on which our schooner lay becalmed, eight miles beyond the foaming surf of the barrier reef.