and Mrs. Stevenson felt great
compassion for the unhappy woman and did what they could to relieve
her financial needs.

The _Casco_ was a beautiful racing yacht, with cabin fittings of silk
and velvet, and was kept so shiningly clean by her crew that in the
islands she came to be known as the Silver Ship. At last all was
ready, and, with a cabin packed with flowers and fruit sent by
admiring friends, early in the morning of June 28, 1888, as the first
rays of the sun glinted back from the dancing water, the _Casco_ was
towed across the bay, amid salutes from the ferry-boats and the trains
on shore, and out through the narrow passage of the Golden Gate. Then
the Silver Ship, shaking out her snowy sails, turned her prow across
the glittering expanse straight towards the enchanted isles of which
Louis Stevenson had dreamed since he was a boy of twenty.

The women had already provided themselves with their old solace of
knitting for the slow-passing days at sea, and all settled down for
the long voyage. All through the story of their three years of
wandering among the islands of the South Seas runs the thread of the
wife's devotion; of how she took upon herself the fatiguing details of
preparations for the voyages, searching for ships and arranging for
supplies; of how she walked across an island to get horses and wagon
to move the sick man to a more comfortable place; of how she saved his
trunk of manuscripts from destruction by fire on shipboard, of how she
cheerfully endured a thousand discomforts, hardships, and even dangers
for the sake of the slight increase of health and happiness the life
brought to the loved one. She was not a good sailor and suffered much
from seasickness on these voyages. Some of the trials of life on the
ocean wave under rough conditions are described in a letter to her
friend Mrs. Sitwell:

"As for me, I hate the sea and am afraid of it (though no one will
believe that because in time of danger I do not make an outcry), but I
love the tropic weather and the wild people, and to see my two boys so
happy.... To keep house on a yacht is no easy matter. When I was
deathly sick the question was put to me by the cook: 'What shall we
have for the cabin dinner, what for to-morrow's breakfast, what for
lunch, and what about the sailors' food? And please come and look at
the biscuits, for the weevils have got into them, and show me how to
make yeast that will rise of itself, and smell the pork, which