ore considerable
tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns ... all talking and we
could not understand one word; all trying to trade with us who had no
thought of trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably
absurd."

All this charmed and delighted Stevenson, who had dreamed many times of
witnessing just such a scene. He wrote to Cummie that he was living all
over again many of the stories she had read to him and found them coming
true about himself.

For six weeks they cruised about among these islands, frequently
dropping anchor and going ashore for several days. When the natives were
convinced that they had neither come to trade or to make trouble, but
were simply interested in them and their country, they made the visitors
most welcome and showered presents of fruit, mats, baskets, and fans
upon them.

All were eager to visit the schooner, which they called _Pahi Mani_,
meaning the shining or the silver ship. The chiefs tried to measure its
dimensions with their arms. The liveliest curiosity was shown about
everything; the red velvet cushions, the looking-glasses, and the
typewriter pleased particularly. A photograph of Queen Victoria hung in
the fore-cabin and was always described to the island callers as _Vahine
Haka-iki Beritano_, which meant literally, woman-great-chief Britain. It
was a surprise to find how much many of them already knew about her.

Some afternoons the _Casco_ swarmed with these strange visitors who were
always delighted at the refreshments of ship's biscuits and pineapple
syrup and water offered them. A certain chief was particularly taken
with a pair of gloves belonging to Mrs. Stevenson, senior. He smelled of
them, called them British tattooing, and insisted on her putting them on
and off a great many times.

The entire family fell quickly into the island mode of living; dressed
as the white inhabitants did; ate all the strange kinds of native food;
and when ashore lived in the native houses, which resembled bird-cages
on stilts. The climate suited them to perfection, and Stevenson
particularly benefited by it, bathing daily in the warm surf and taking
long walks along the beach in search of strange shells.

"Here we are," his mother wrote to Cummie, "in a little bay surrounded
by green mountains, on which sheep are grazing, and there are birds very
like our own 'blackies' singing in the trees. If it were not for the
groves of cocoanut palms, we might almost fancy ourse