s day-dreaming."

"Tell me, Jim," she said softly, so softly that her voice sank to a
whisper.

"Not now, Lucia. Wait till we get to the next land." And then in all
innocence I added, as I looked at her, "How bright and happy you look,
Lucia! I think you grow more beautiful every day."

She lifted her eyes to mine for one instant, and I saw in them a light I
had never seen before.

CHAPTER XIV

"_Te fanua, te fanua! te fanua umi, umi lava!_" ("Land, land! a long,
long land!")

As we, the "watch below"--Niabon, Tepi, and myself--heard Tematau's loud
cry, we sat up, and saw a long, dark line pencilled on the horizon right
ahead, which we knew was the great lonely atoll named Providence Island
on the charts, and called Ujilon by the natives of the North-Western
Pacific.

It was daylight of the sixth day out from Kusaie, and as I stood up to
get a better view of the land I was well satisfied.

"We have done well," I said exultantly to Lucia, who was steering:
"three hundred and forty miles in five days--with a two-knot current
against us all the way!"

[Illustration: Saw a barque lying on the reef 182]

I did not know my way into Ujilon Lagoon, for I had never been there
before, so I now had some trouble in picking up one of the two passages
on the south side of the great atoll. At seven o'clock, just as we were
entering it, we saw a barque lying on the reef about half a mile away
to the northward. She was a good lump of a vessel--apparently of about
seven or eight hundred tons, and the remnants of some of her upper
canvas still fluttered to the breeze. We could discern no sign of life
about her, nor were any boats visible; but we had no time to examine
her just then, so sailed on across the lagoon, and, instead of dropping
anchor, ran gently on to the beach of a densely wooded island, for the
water was not only as smooth as glass, but very deep, the "fall" from
the edge of the beach being very steep.

In an hour we had lightened the boat sufficiently to float her along a
narrow waterway, which wound a sinuous course through the solid coral
rock into a little basin or natural dock, where we could board her at
either low or high water, without wetting our feet, though she had a
clear fathom of water under her keel.

The lagoon seemed alive with large and small fish--none of which, Niabon
said, were poisonous, like two thirds of those of the Marshall
Island atolls, and the beaches and sand-flats were cov