8 



HA WAIL 



[letter I. 



seventeen years. This grand old man, nearly the oldest captain 

 in the Pacific, won our respect and confidence from the first, 

 and his quiet and masterly handling of this dilapidated old ship 

 is beyond all praise. 



When the strain of apprehension was mitigated, we became 

 aware that we had not had anything to eat since breakfast, a 

 clean sweep having been made, not only of the lunch, but of 

 all the glass in the racks above it; but all requests to the 

 stewards were insufficient to procure even biscuits, and at 

 eleven we retired supperless to bed, amidst a confusion of 

 awful sounds, and were deprived of lights as well as food. 

 When we asked for food or light, and made weak appeals on 

 the ground of faintness, the one steward who seemed to dawdle 

 about for the sole purpose of making himself disagreeable, 

 always replied, "You can't get anything, the stewards are on 

 duty." We were not accustomed to recognize that stewards 

 had any other duty than that of feeding the passengers, but 

 under the circumstances Ave meekly acquiesced. We were 

 allowed to know that a part of the foreguards had been carried 

 away, and that iron stanchions four inches thick had been 

 gnarled and twisted like candy sticks, and the constant falling 

 of the saloon casing of the mainmast, showed something wrong 

 there. A heavy clang, heard at intervals by clay and night, 

 aroused some suspicions as to more serious damage, and these 

 were afterwards confirmed. As the wind fell the sea rose, and 

 for some hours realized every description I have read of the 

 majesty and magnitude of the rollers of the South Pacific. 



The day after the hurricane something went wrong with the 

 engines, and we were stationary for an hour. We all felt 

 thankful that this derangement, which would have jeopardised 

 or sacrificed sixty lives, was then only a slight detention on a 

 summer sea. 



Five days out from Auckland we entered the tropics with a 

 temperature of 8o° in the water, and 85 in the air, but as the 

 light head airs blew the intense heat of our two smoke stacks 

 aft, we often endured a temperature of no°. There were 

 quiet heavy tropical showers, and a general misty dampness, 

 and the Navigator Islands, with their rainbow-tinted coral 

 forests, their fringe of coco palms, and groves of banyan and 

 breadfruit trees, those sunniest isles of the bright South Seas, 

 resolved themselves into dark lumps looming through a drizzling 

 mist. But the showers and the dampness were confined to that 

 region, and for the last fortnight an unclouded tropical sun has 



