In the following text, taken from an anthology of travel writing, the author remembers joining a group of children and their uncle on a boat journey in the South Pacific. UNCLE JOE'S OUTING South Pacific, June 1995 Joining a group of children on an outing in the South Seas brought back memories of long-gone summers. It was darkening now, and a fat moon rose behind the island, showering the shallows with light. Needles of phosphorescence ignited in the wake of the boat as it moved in towards the beach. Uncle Joe had cut the engine, and one of the island boys stood on the bow, poling us into the smooth waters near the shoreline. Behind us the Calvados Islands stretched off towards New Guinea, and beyond that the great immensity of Asia. An hour earlier we crossed the last great coral reef before Neimoa, Uncle Joe steering carefully while an islander whispered directions in his ear. No matter how many times he had crossed this jagged obstacle course, he wanted the voice of an islander in his ear, whispering the turns of the wheel like a prayer. And then we were clear into the lee of the Calvados where a marlin¹ leapt across our bows and the schools of flying fish chased across the waves, while the children cheered and sang: 'Five little hungry frogs sitting on a great big log, eating all the delicious bugs, yum, yum.' Now in the shallows one of them had seen a shark. It lay straight ahead in the shaky light-beams of Uncle Joe's ancient torch, a small sandshark dozing in the white sands of the shallows. The three children were on holiday with their Uncle Joe and they had begged him to rescue them from the boredom of the summer holidays. The youngest was called Mitchey, and his two sisters began to tease him. 'That shark will eat you Mitchey,' they cried. But Mitchey wasn't bothered. He knew the sandshark only cared about fish. We made the last kilometres of the journey on a small fishing skip. The island smell, ozone, hibiscus, coconut, sweet wild grass, flowed towards us on the night breeze and Mitchey, who had spoken all the way down about leaping on to the beach, fell fast asleep, and was carried on to the sand by his eldest sister. Over the next three days, I watched the children as they followed Uncle Joe from one end of the island to the other. They teased Mitchey relentlessly and then cuddled him; they pretended to steal his food, and then fed him with toffees. In the mornings, they would run diving into the crystal waters, hooting and shrieking, splashing each other until, exhausted from the play, they would fall on the hot sand and sing of the small frogs or tunes of the South Seas unknown to me. When I left them, watching their smiling faces growing ever more distant, as the boat began its inexorable² journey out of Eden, I felt a pang for all my own summers past and gone, and for the adult life with all its trials that even now was slowly swimming towards them. ¹marlin: a large marine fish ²inexorable: impossible to stop or prevent