sky, and the sea to the eastward shone for leagues and leagues in the
loveliest azure. Where it rippled on my own beach and those of the low
islands noted over night, a wonderful fire of blue and red played on
the sands as though the broken water were full of living gems. The sky
was full of strange gulls with long, forked tails, and a lovely little
flying lizard with transparent wings of the palest green--like those of
a grasshopper--was flitting about picking up insect stragglers.

All this was very charming, but what I kept saying to myself was "Streaky
rashers and hot coffee: rashers and coffee and rolls," and, indeed, had
the gates of Paradise themselves opened at that moment I fear my first
look down the celestial streets within would have been for a restaurant.
They did not, and I was just turning away disconsolate when my eye caught,
ascending from behind the next bluff down the beach, a thin strand of
smoke rising into the morning air.

It was nothing so much in itself--a thin spiral creeping upwards
mast-high, then flattening out into a mushroom head--but it meant
everything to me. Where there was fire there must be humanity, and where
there was humanity--ay, to the very outlayers of the universe--there
must be breakfast. It was a splendid thought; I rushed down the hillock
and went gaily for that blue thread amongst the reeds. It was not two
hundred yards away, and soon below me was a tiny bay with bluest water
frilling a silver beach, and in the midst of it a fire on a hearth dancing
round a pot that simmered gloriously. But of an owner there was nothing
to be seen. I peered here and there on the shore, but nothing moved,
while out to sea the water was shining like molten metal with not a
dot upon it!--what did it matter? I laughed as, pleased and hungry,
I slipped down the bank and strode across the sands; it pleased Fate to
play bandy with me, and if it sent me supperless to bed, why, here was