Quotation from: The Cruise of the Snark

Written by: Jack London


Before we were aware, we were close in to Tahaa (pronounced Tah-hah-
ah, with equal accents), and Tehei was grinning approval of the
vahine's proficiency at bailing. The canoe grounded on a shallow
shore, twenty feet from land, and we waded out on a soft bottom
where big slugs curled and writhed under our feet and where small
octopuses advertised their existence by their superlative softness
when stepped upon. Close to the beach, amid cocoanut palms and
banana trees, erected on stilts, built of bamboo, with a grass-
thatched roof, was Tehei's house. And out of the house came Tehei's
vahine, a slender mite of a woman, kindly eyed and Mongolian of
feature--when she was not North American Indian. "Bihaura," Tehei
called her, but he did not pronounce it according to English notions
of spelling. Spelled "Bihaura," it sounded like Bee-ah-oo-rah, with
every syllable sharply emphasized.

PREVIOUS GROUP HOME SITE HOME NEXT
Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
Change Tag: ~~ 0 ~~
Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.