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ed a piece of land to bring me back for sure.[32] [Footnote 32: Mr. Hoeflich returned to Samoa a year or two later to remain, and was always a valued friend of the Stevensons.] "As I look back now I cannot help admiring Mrs. Stevenson for her bravery and endurance in her resolution to remain with her husband. For us men this life was right enough, but for a refined woman it meant great hardship. When Mr. Stevenson, in his birthday speech on board, said with moist eyes that he had never enjoyed a voyage and company so well as ours, Mrs. Stevenson deserved the largest share of that praise. I remember how she took care of him. A doctor in Tahiti, who apprehended his early end, gave his wife a vial of medicine, which she carried sewn in her dress for three years to have it handy. I have a much-prized photograph of her on which she wrote 'Dear Paul. This is to remind you of the days when we were so happy on board of the old _Equator_.' This gives me a sad pleasure in recalling the old times when the South Seas seemed to us so much brighter than now. Civilization is coming to the natives at the rate of geometrical progression, and soon their good qualities will be swept away by greed and false education. "I have the honor to remain, Yours faithfully, P. Hoeflich." That the voyage was a rough one is clear from Mr. Stevenson's description in a letter to Sir Sidney Colvin: "On board the _Equator_, 190 miles off Samoa. We are just nearing the end of our long cruise. Rain, calms, squalls, bang--there's the fore-topmast gone; rain, calms, squalls--away with the staysail; more rain, more calms, more squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time, and the _Equator_ staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm; and the cabin, a great square, crowded with wet human beings, and the rain avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping everywhere; Fanny, in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully." She rejoiced, nevertheless, that her mother-in-law had not accompanied them on this voyage, with its extreme discomfort and hardship, but adds, "and yet I would do it all over again." In the early part of December, 1889, they arrived at the Navigator Islands--so called by Bougainville because of the skill with which the natives managed their canoes and sailed them far out to sea--and, as related above by Paul Ho
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