By the time Queen Se had finished and paid for her purchases her
royal husband fell in a heap upon the cabin floor, and a number of
twenty-dollar gold pieces, which he carried in a leather pouch at his
waist, fell out and rolled all over the cabin. The Queen at once picked
them up, and concealed them in the bosom of her dress, telling me with
a smile that she would come on board again when we returned from
Arrecifos, or as she called it, Ujilong, and spend them. Shortly
afterward, her women attendants carried his Majesty up on deck, and
Hayes sent him ashore in one of our boats; and then, with our decks
filled with the noisy, excitable Pleasant and Ocean Islanders, and the
white traders rolling about among them in a state of noisy intoxication,
we got under way, and, with our yards squared, ran down the coast within
a cable length of the reef.

*****

Three days later we were driven ashore in a fierce north-westerly gale
and the trim little _Leonora_ sank in Utwe Harbour in fourteen fathoms
of water.

The story of the wreck of the _Leonora_ in Utwe Harbour has been told by
the writer in another work, so I will now merely describe some incidents
of our stay on the island. First of all, however, let me make some brief
mention of the island and its people. Kusaie is about thirty-five miles
in circumference and of basaltic formation, and from the coast to the
lofty summit of Mount Buache, 2,200 feet high, is clothed with the
richest verdure imaginable. The northern part of the island rises
precipitously from the sea, and has no outlying barrier reef, but from
the centre the land trends westward and southward in a graceful slope
towards the beautiful shores of Coquille Harbour. The southern portion
is enclosed by a chain of palm-clad coral islets, connected at low water
by reefs, forming a long, deep lagoon, the waters of which teem with
fish and turtle. This lagoon was used as a means of communication
between the village of Utwe Harbour, where the _Leonora_ was wrecked,
and the village at Coquille, and all day long one might see the
red-painted canoes of the natives passing to and fro over its glassy
waters, which were, from their enclosed position, seldom raffled by any
wind, except daring the rainy or westerly wind season. There were but
three villages of any size on the island--that at Lele, where the King
and his principal chiefs lived, Utwe or Port Lottin, and Mout or Leasee,
on the shores of Coquille Harbour. At