PREFACE
For some months past, my daily stint at the typewriter has been cheered by an ambitious hope: that this story might prove entertaining to the young—the finest of all audiences. They are too wise even to glance at so dull a thing as a preface, but to you older people, who are responsible for what the young ones read, I have a word to say.
I make no claim, in the pages which follow, to have done more than muster the familiar marionettes and put them through their paces before your eyes. In one respect, nevertheless, I venture to commit myself. I know the islands fairly well—white man and native; skipper, trader, and pearl-diver; the sea, the lagoons, the small and lonely bits of land; and I can vouch for the genuineness of the story's atmosphere.
As for the story, there is nothing in it which has not happened, or might not happen to-day—for Romance, like the sea itself, is ever old and ever new.
C. N.
TAHITI, 1924