; for, after being ten days out from Apamama, I began to feel anxious
about our position and would have liked to have spoken a ship, fearing
that the current, in such calm weather, would set us so far to the
westward that I should have difficulty in making the island if we once
got to leeward of it.

Day after day had passed with the same unvarying monotony--light winds,
a calm, then a brisker spell of the dying trades for a few hours, or a
day at most--then another calm lasting through the night, and so on.

But our spirits very seldom flagged, and we contrived to make the time
pass somehow. Lucia, whose face and hands were now browning deeply from
continuous exposure to the rays of a torrid sun worked with Niabon at
dressmaking, for she had brought with her half a dozen bolts of print;
and, as they sewed, they would sometimes sing together, whilst I and my
two trusty men busied ourselves about the boat--scrubbing, scraping and
polishing inside and out, cleaning and oiling our arms; or, when a shoal
of bonita came alongside, getting out our lines and catching as many of
the blue and marbled beauties as would last us for a day or two. But our
chief relaxation, in which the two young women always joined us, was two
or three hours of "sailors' pleasure" i.e., overhauling all our joint
possessions, clothing, trade goods of all sorts, and carefully restowing
them in the boxes in which they were packed.

Tepi's wound by this time was quite healed--the bullet had gone clean
through the fleshy part of his arm, and then struck an oar which was
lashed to the rail. He had got a nail from me and drove it through the
lead into the wood--to be preserved as a memento of the fight.

On the evening of the day on which we sighted the blue peaks of
beautiful Kusaie, the sky began to look ugly to the eastward, and at
daylight it was blowing so hard, with such a dangerous sea, that I
decided not to attempt to enter the weather harbour--Port Lele--though
that had been my intention, but to run round to the lee side to Coquille
Harbour, where we could renew our fresh provisions, spell a day or two,
and be among friends, for I knew the people of Kusaie pretty well.

We got into the smooth water of Coquille just in time, for no sooner had
we dropped anchor at the mouth of a small creek which debouched into the
harbour through a number of mangrove islets, than it commenced to blow
in real earnest, and terrific rain squalls drenched us through