re we got our food aboard, such a cargo--like the Swiss Family
Robinson, we said. However, a squall began, Tauilo refused to let us go,
and we came back to the house for half an hour or so, when my ladies
distinguished themselves by walking through a Fono (council), my mother
actually taking up a position between Mataafa and Popo! It was about
five when we started--turtle, pigs, taro, etc., my mother, Belle,
myself, Tauilo, a portly friend of hers with the voice of an angel, and
a pronunciation so delicate and true that you could follow Samoan as she
sang, and the two tired boys Frank and Jimmie, with the two bad oars and
the two slippery rowlocks to impel the whole. Sale Taylor took the
canoe and a strong Samoan to paddle him. Presently after he went
inshore, and passed us a little after, with his arms folded, and _two_
strong Samoans impelling him Apia-ward. This was too much for Belle, who
hailed, taunted him, and made him return to the boat with one of the
Samoans, setting Jimmie instead in the canoe. Then began our torment,
Sale and the Samoan took the oars, sat on the same thwart (where they
could get no swing on the boat had they tried), and deliberately ladled
at the lagoon. We lay enchanted. Night fell; there was a light visible
on shore; it did not move. The two women sang, Belle joining them in the
hymns she has learned at family worship. Then a squall came up; we sat a
while in roaring midnight under rivers of rain, and, when it blew by,
there was the light again, immovable. A second squall followed, one of
the worst I was ever out in; we could scarce catch our breath in the
cold, dashing deluge. When it went, we were so cold that the water in
the bottom of the boat (which I was then baling) seemed like a warm
footbath in comparison, and Belle and I, who were still barefoot, were
quite restored by laving in it.

All this time I had kept my temper, and refrained as far as might be
from any interference, for I saw (in our friend's mulish humour) he
always contrived to twist it to our disadvantage. But now came the acute
point. Young Frank now took an oar. He was a little fellow, near as
frail as myself, and very short; if he weighed nine stone, it was the
outside; but his blood was up. He took stroke, moved the big Samoan
forward to bow, and set to work to pull him round in fine style.
Instantly, a kind of race competition--almost race hatred--sprang up. We
jeered the Samoan. Sale declared it was the trim of th