COCOS— A TALE OF TREASURE 275 



treasure-hunting. In 1894 he arrived with his wife, 

 and six famihes of colonists, and they fell to work 

 on shelters for themselves and their supplies, and 

 to clearing ground for their plantations. Months 

 passed, and at last the long-expected supply ship 

 came, bringing seven more families and no supplies ! 

 The people were landed and the ship departed, 

 leaving Gissler with a diminishing store of food and 

 the over lordship of thirteen families. The land that 

 had been cleared and planted was not yet producing 

 much, and like a wise captain, Gissler put his crew 

 on rations at once. The dismayed colonists, who 

 had expectantly emigrated to a dolce far niente 

 Paradise, found themselves marooned where hard 

 work and a food shortage made this tropical refuge 

 painfully like their former dwelling-places. 



The ship did not return; no ship of any kind 

 came, and discontent was rife. At last, seeing that 

 starvation was perilously close and that they had 

 been abandoned by the government, Gissler built 

 an eighteen-foot boat in the little stream that 

 empties into Wafer Bay, where the tiny settlement 

 stood. 



"With my wife's bed-sheets I made the sails," 

 he told me, "and I went to the mainland for help," 

 a voyage of more than three hundred miles in a 

 very home-made craft. 



The help obtained, most of the colonists departed 

 in haste, with a revised opinion of that Swiss fam- 

 ily called Robinson, and it was not long before 

 Captain and Mrs. Gissler, with a peon or two, 

 were left in sole possession of Cocos. And so they 



