if we had returned to Apia we should have missed the great gale and
subsequent cyclone, and with these much else. But it was not so fated.

It was on the fourth day, when we were roughly seven hundred miles or
more north of Samoa, that we met the edge of this gale about sundown.
The captain put on steam in the hope of pushing through it, but that
night we dined for the first time with the fiddles on, and by eleven
o'clock it was as much as one could do to stand in the cabin, while the
water was washing freely over the deck. Fortunately, however, the
wind veered more aft of us, so that by putting about her head a little
(seamen must forgive me if I talk of these matters as a landlubber) we
ran almost before the wind, though not quite in the direction that we
wished to go.

When the light came it was blowing very hard indeed, and the sky was
utterly overcast, so that we got no glimpse of the sun, or of the
stars on the following night. Unfortunately, there was no moon visible;
indeed, if there had been I do not suppose that it would have helped us
because of the thick pall of clouds. For quite seventy-two hours we
ran on beneath bare poles before that gale. The little vessel behaved
splendidly, riding the seas like a duck, but I could see that Captain
Astley was growing alarmed. When I said something complimentary to him
about the conduct of the Star of the South, he replied that she was
forging ahead all right, but the question was--where to? He had been
unable to take an observation of any sort since we left Samoa; both
his patent logs had been carried away, so that now only the compass
remained, and he had not the slightest idea where we were in that great
ocean studded with atolls and islands.

I asked him whether we could not steam back to our proper course, but
he answered that to do so he would have to travel dead in the eye of the
gale, and he doubted whether the engines would stand it. Also there was
the question of coal to be considered. However, he had kept the fires
going and would do what he could if the weather moderated.

That night during dinner which now consisted of tinned foods and whisky
and water, for the seas had got to the galley fire, suddenly the gale
dropped, whereat we rejoiced exceedingly. The captain came down into the
saloon very white and shaken, I thought, and I asked him to have a nip
of whisky to warm him up, and to celebrate our good fortune in having
run out of the wind. He took the