But what surprised me most was its immense length, which I measured very carefully, and found to be a hundred feet long; and it was so capacious that it could have held three hundred men.

It had the unwieldy out-rigger and enormously high stern-posts which I had remarked on the canoe that came to us while I was on the Coral Island.
Observing some boys playing at games a short way along the beach, I resolved to go and watch them; but as I turned from the natives who were engaged so busily and cheerfully at their work, I little thought of the terrible event that hung on the completion of that war-canoe.
Advancing towards the children, who were so numerous that I began to think this must be the general play-ground of the village, I sat down on a grassy bank under the shade of a plantain-tree, to watch them.

And a happier or more noisy crew I have never seen.

There were at least two hundred of them, both boys and girls, all of whom were clad in no other garments than their own glossy little black skins, except the maro, or strip of cloth round the loins of the boys, and a very short petticoat or kilt on the girls.

They did not all play at the same game, but amused themselves in different groups.
One band was busily engaged in a game exactly similar to our blind-man's- buff.