ning on the hotel verandah stricken silly
with fatigue and disappointment, and genuine sorrow for our poor boys
and girls, and got to bed with rather dismal appreciations of the
morrow.

These were more than justified, and yet I never had a jollier day than
Friday 27th. By 7.30 Belle and I had breakfast; we had scarce done
before my mother was at the door on horseback, and a boy at her heels to
take her not very dashing charger home again. By 8.10 we were all on the
landing pier, and it was 9.20 before we had got away in a boat with two
inches of green wood on the keel of her, no rudder, no mast, no sail, no
boat flag, two defective rowlocks, two wretched apologies for oars, and
two boys--one a Tongan half-caste, one a white lad, son of the Tonga
schoolmaster, and a sailor lad--to pull us. All this was our first taste
of the tender mercies of Taylor (the sesquipedalian half-caste
introduced two letters back, I believe). We had scarce got round Mulinuu
when Sale Taylor's heart misgave him; he thought we had missed the tide;
called a halt, and set off ashore to find canoes. Two were found; in one
my mother and I were embarked with the two biscuit tins (my present to
the feast), and the bag with our dry clothes, on which my mother was
perched--and her cap was on the top of it--feminine hearts please
sympathise; all under the guidance of Sale. In the other Belle and our
guest; Tauilo, a chief-woman, the mother of my cook, were to have
followed. And the boys were to have been left with the boat. But Tauilo
refused. And the four, Belle, Tauilo, Frank the sailor-boy, and Jimmie
the Tongan half-caste, set off in the boat across that rapidly shoaling
bay of the lagoon.

How long the next scene lasted, I could never tell. Sale was always
trying to steal away with our canoe and leave the other four, probably
for six hours, in an empty, leaky boat, without so much as an orange or
a cocoanut on board, and under the direct rays of the sun. I had at last
to stop him by taking the spare paddle off the outrigger and sticking it
in the ground--depth, perhaps two feet--width of the bay, say three
miles. At last I bid him land me and my mother and go back for the other
ladies. "The coast is so rugged," said Sale.--"What?" I said, "all
these villages and no landing-place?"--"Such is the nature of Samoans,"
said he. Well, I'll find a landing-place, I thought; and presently I
said, "Now we are going to land there."--"We can but try," said th