s more constant than
becomes the breasts of such absconders. My good health does not cease to
be wonderful to myself: Fanny is better in these warm places; it is the
very thing for Lloyd; and in the matter of interest, the spice of life,
etc., words cannot depict what fun we have. Try to have a little more
patience with the fugitives, and think of us now and again among the
Gilberts, where we ought to be about the time when you receive this
scrap. They make no great figure on the atlas, I confess; but you will
see the name there, if you look--which I wish you would, and try to
conceive us as still extant. We all send the kindest remembrances to all
of you; please make one of the girls write us the news to the care of R.
Towns & Co., Sydney, New South Wales, where we hope to bring up about
the end of the year--or later. Do not forget yours affectionately,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Stevenson and his party sailed accordingly on the trading schooner
_Equator_, "on a certain bright June day in 1889," for the Gilbert
Islands, a scattered group of atolls in the Western Pacific. Their
expectation was to come back into civilisation again by way of the
Carolines, Manila, and the China ports; but instead of this,
circumstances which occurred to change the trader's course took them
southwards to Samoa, where they arrived in December of the same year.
Their second voyage was thus of six months' duration; in the course
of it they spent two periods of about six weeks each on land, first
at one and then at another of the two island capitals, Butaritari and
Apemama. The following letter is the first which reached Stevenson's
friends from this part of his voyage, and was written in two
instalments, the first from on board the _Equator_ in the lagoon of
the island of Apaiang; the second, six weeks later, from the
settlement on shore at Apemama, which the king, his friend Temhinoka,
allowed him and his party to occupy during their stay. The account of
this stay at Apemama and of the character of the king is far the most
interesting and attractive part of the volume called _In the South
Seas_, which was the literary result of these voyages.

_Schooner Equator, Apaiang Lagoon, August 22nd, 1889._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--The missionary ship is outside the reef trying (vainly)
to get in; so I may have a chance to get a line off. I am glad to say I
shall