184 MYSTIC ISLES 



They took a ten-gallon steel oil-drum and made a stove 

 out of it. They cut it in two at the middle and kept the 

 bottom half. They then made a place for holding a 

 pot, with pieces of scrap-iron fixed to the side of the 

 drum, so that they could make a fire under the pot with- 

 out setting fire to the boat. Then the captain set them 

 to learning to make fire by rubbing sticks, and after 

 many days they learned it. The manager had a steer 

 killed, and they jerked the meat and loaded up their 

 boat beside with sweet potatoes, taro, white potatoes, 

 five dozen eggs, and twenty gallons of water in their 

 tank, with twenty-five more in a barrel. 



Then bidding good-by to everybody who gathered to 

 see them off, they steered for Pitcairn Island. They 

 soon found that the prevailing wind would not permit 

 them to make that course, and so they laid for Man- 

 gareva in 23° south and 134° west, sixteen hundred 

 miles distant. They had to go from 28° south and 110° 

 west, 5° of latitude and 24° of longitude. Again they 

 were at the mercy of the sea, but now they had only 

 three men in the boat, and had enough food for many 

 days, rough as it was. In the latitude of Pitcairn, the 

 island so famous because to it fled the mutineers of the 

 Bounty, they all but perished. For two days a severe 

 storm nearly overwhelmed them. The boat was more 

 buoyant, and with the sea-anchor trailing, they came 

 through the trial without injury. Steve said the light- 

 ning was "yoost like a leedle bid of hell." It circled 

 them about, hissed in the water, and finally struck their 

 mast repeatedly, so that the wise captain took it down. 

 The entire heavens were a mass of coruscating electri- 

 city, and they could feel the air alive with it. They 



