ice, and is delicious."[27]

[Footnote 27: _The Letters of Mrs. M. I. Stevenson,
Saranac to Marquesas._]

Although the _Casco_ had been originally built solely for coast
sailing, and was scarcely fit for battling with wind and wave on the
open sea, it was decided to take the risk and lay their course for
Tahiti through the Dangerous Archipelago. After taking on a mate who
was thoroughly acquainted with those waters, and a Chinese named Ah Fu
to serve them as cook, they sailed away from the Marquesas. Ah Fu had
been brought to the islands when a child, a forlorn little slave among
a band of labourers sent by a contractor to work on the plantations,
although, as the contract called for grown men, it was fraudulent to
send a child. On the islands the boy grew up tall and robust,
abandoned the queue, and no longer looked in the least like a Chinese.
He became one of the most important members of the Stevenson family,
remaining with them for two years. He was intensely attached to Mrs.
Stevenson, carrying his devotion so far that once during a storm, when
the ship was apparently about to go to the bottom, he appropriated the
signal halyards, for which she had expressed an admiration, to give
her as a present, explaining that "if the ship went down they wouldn't
want them, and if it were saved they would all be too grateful to miss
them." When the time came for him to leave the Stevensons and return
to his family in China, it nearly broke his heart to go. Mrs.
Stevenson writes of him:

"Ah Fu had as strong a sense of romance as Louis himself. He returned
to China with a belt of gold around his waist, a ninety dollar breech
loader given him by Louis, and a boxful of belongings. His intention
was to leave these great riches with a member of his family who lived
outside the village, dress himself in beggar's rags, and then go to
his mother's house to solicit alms. He would draw from her the account
of the son who had been lost when he was a little child, and, at the
psychological moment, when the poor lady was weeping, Ah Fu would cry
out: 'Behold your son returned to you, not a beggar, as I appear, but
a man of wealth!"

On September 8 they ran into the lagoon of Fakarava, a typical low
island forming a great ring some eighty miles in circumference by only
a couple of hundred yards in width, and lying not more than twenty
feet above the sea. Their experiences during a fortnight's stay on
this bi