“His was the golden touch, but he played the game, not for
the gold, but for the game's sake. It was a man's game, the rough contacts and
fierce give and take of the adventurers of his own blood and of half the bloods
of Europe and the rest of the world, and it was a good game; but over and
beyond was his love of all the other things that go to make up a South Seas
rover's life—the smell of the reef; the infinite exquisiteness of the shoals of
living coral in the mirror-surfaced lagoons; the crashing sunrises of raw
colors spread with lawless cunning; the palm-tufted islets set in turquoise
deeps; the tonic wine of the trade-winds; the heave and send of the orderly,
crested seas; the moving deck beneath his feet, the straining canvas overhead;
the flower-garlanded, golden-glowing men and maids of Polynesia, half-children
and half-gods; and even the howling savages of Melanesia, head-hunters and
man-eaters, half-devil and all beast.”
Chapter 3, A Son of the Sun
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