this, when I tried to haul the sloop and found her fast
in the sand, the children all clapped their hands and cried that a
_kpeting_ (crab) was holding her by the keel; and little Ophelia, ten
or twelve years of age, wrote in the _Spray's_ log-book:

A hundred men with might and main
On the windlass hove, yeo ho!
The cable only came in twain;
The ship she would not go;
For, child, to tell the strangest thing,
The keel was held by a great kpeting.

This being so or not, it was decided that the Mohammedan priest, Sama
the Emim, for a pot of jam, should ask Mohammed to bless the voyage
and make the crab let go the sloop's keel, which it did, if it had
hold, and she floated on the very next tide.

On the 22d of July arrived H.M.S. _Iphegenia,_ with Mr. Justice Andrew
J. Leech and court officers on board, on a circuit of inspection among
the Straits Settlements, of which Keeling Cocos was a dependency, to
hear complaints and try cases by law, if any there were to try. They
found the _Spray_ hauled ashore and tied to a cocoanut-tree. But at
the Keeling Islands there had not been a grievance to complain of
since the day that Hare migrated, for the Bosses have always treated
the islanders as their own family.

If there is a paradise on this earth it is Keeling. There was not a
case for a lawyer, but something had to be done, for here were two
ships in port, a great man-of-war and the _Spray._ Instead of a
lawsuit a dance was got up, and all the officers who could leave their
ship came ashore. Everybody on the island came, old and young, and the
governor's great hall was filled with people. All that could get on
their feet danced, while the babies lay in heaps in the corners of the
room, content to look on. My little friend Ophelia danced with the
judge. For music two fiddles screeched over and over again the good
old tune, "We won't go home till morning." And we did not.

The women at the Keelings do not do all the drudgery, as in many
places visited on the voyage. It would cheer the heart of a Fuegian
woman to see the Keeling lord of creation up a cocoanut-tree. Besides
cleverly climbing the trees, the men of Keeling build exquisitely
modeled canoes. By far the best workmanship in boat-building I saw on
the voyage was here. Many finished mechanics dwelt under the palms at
Keeling, and the hum of the band-saw and the ring of the anvil were
heard from morning till night. The first Scotch settlers left th