the guava scrub to the quiet sea a thousand feet beneath. For a
week, ever since I had landed from the tiny coasting-steamer, I had
been stopping with Cudworth, and during that time no wind had
ruffled that unvexed sea. True, there had been breezes, but they
were the gentlest zephyrs that ever blew through summer isles. They
were not winds; they were sighs--long, balmy sighs of a world at
rest.

"A lotus land," I said.

"Where each day is like every day, and every day is a paradise of
days," he answered. "Nothing ever happens. It is not too hot. It
is not too cold. It is always just right. Have you noticed how the
land and the sea breathe turn and turn about?"

Indeed, I had noticed that delicious rhythmic, breathing. Each
morning I had watched the sea-breeze begin at the shore and slowly
extend seaward as it blew the mildest, softest whiff of ozone to the
land. It played over the sea, just faintly darkening its surface,
with here and there and everywhere long lanes of calm, shifting,
changing, drifting, according to the capricious kisses of the
breeze. And each evening I had watched the sea breath die away to
heavenly calm, and heard the land breath softly make its way through
the coffee trees and monkey-pods.

"It is a land of perpetual calm," I said. "Does it ever blow here?-
-ever really blow? You know what I mean."

Cudworth shook his head and pointed eastward.