oyage to Ponape. They accepted his offer with the strongest
protestations of gratitude, and before noon we sailed with over a
hundred of the poor people on board. Before we left, however, Hayes gave
the remainder of the population nearly a ton of rice and several casks
of biscuits. "You can pay me when the sky of brass has broken and the
rain falls, and the land is fertile once more," said the so-called
pirate.

We made a quick passage to the Caroline Islands, touching at Kusaie or
Strong's Island on our way, and on a Sunday evening swept into Jakoits
Harbour on the island of Ponape before a strong trade-wind. Here we made
engagements for our passengers with a German planter, and two days later
we again were at sea, bound for the western portion of the Carolines.

For the following three or four months, the brig cruised among the
other islands of the Western Carolines, buying copra and turtle-shell
in considerable quantities; for the much-maligned "Bully," despite his
moral obliquity of vision in his commercial dealings with the merchants
of Tahiti and other Polynesian ports, yet possessed the confidence of
the wild Caroline Islanders to a remarkable degree. Then we returned to
Ponape, where we remained a month, wooding and watering and cleaning the
ship's bottom by the aid of native divers of both sexes.

Leaving Ponape we drifted rather than sailed back to the eastward,
and one morning in March we again saw the verdant heights of beautiful
Kusaie or Strong's Island, about ten miles away. On our first visit we
had anchored at Coquille Harbour, a lovely lake of deepest blue, on
the lee side of the island, where the king had supplied us with all
the provisions we wanted; and Hayes had promised to return again in six
months and buy a large quantity of coco-nut oil that his Majesty was
keeping for him: and in pursuance of that promise the _Leonora_ had now
returned to the island.

As the breeze freshened we worked up to Lele, the principal harbour of
the island, where Togusa, the king, resided, and in a few hours we were
boarded by a number of white men, whom we had last seen at two lonely
spots near the equator called Pleasant and Ocean Islands. In a few
minutes we learnt that in consequence of their lives being in imminent
danger from the natives, they, accompanied by their native wives,
families, and over one hundred natives connected with them by marriage,
had escaped from the islands in two whaleships, and landed a