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pandanus mats, and cushions stuffed with the down of the silk-cotton tree. The cushions have covers of "trade " cottons, rudely embroidered by the owner's sweetheart or wife with decorative designs, and affection

ate mottoes.

From 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. are the hours of work, with an hour and three-quarters off for meals. There is nothing unpleasant about the work, as Malden Island guano is absolutely without odour, and apparently so dry and fine when taken from the pits, that one wonders at the necessity for further sifting and drying. Occasionally, however, one of the workers develops a peculiar intestinal trouble which is said to be caused by the fine dust of the pits. It is nearly always fatal, by slow degrees. Our schooner carried away one of these unfortunates a Savage Island man who had come up to Malden in full health and strength only a few months before. He was the merest shadow or sketch of a human being a bundle of bones clad in loose brown skin, with a skull-like face, all teeth and eye-sockets-he could not stand or walk, only creep along the deck; and he was very obviously dying. Poor fellow! he longed for his own home above everything-the cool green island, sixteen hundred miles away, where there were fruit and flowers in the shady valleys, and women's and children's voices sounding pleasantly about the grassy village streets, and his own little pandanus-thatched cottage, with his "fafiné" and the babies at the door, among the palms and oranges above the sea. But the schooner had a two months' voyage to make yet among the Cook and other groups, before Savage Island could be reached; and Death was already lifting his spear to strike. We left the poor fellow as a last chance on Penrhyn Island, a couple of hundred miles away, hoping that

the unlimited cocoanuts he could obtain there might do him some good, and that by some fortunate chance he might recover sufficiently to take another ship, and reach Niué at last.

The guano of Malden Island is supposed to be the best in the world. It is extremely rich in superphosphates, and needs no "doctoring" whatever, being ready to apply to the land just as taken from the island. As the company are obliged to guarantee the purity of what they sell, and give an exact analysis of the constitutents of every lot, they keep a skilled chemist on the island, and place a fine laboratory at his disposal. These analyses are tedious to make, and require great accuracy, as a mistake might cause a refusal of payment on the part of the purchaser. The post of official chemist, therefore, is no sinecure, especially as it includes the duties of dispenser as well, and not a little roughand-ready doctoring at times.

The temperature of the island is not so high as might be expected from the latitude. It seldom goes above 90° in the shade, and is generally rendered quite endurable, in spite of the merciless glare and total absence of shade, by the persistent trade-wind. Mosquitoes are unknown, and flies not troublesome. There are no centipedes, scorpions, or other venomous creatures, although the neighbouring islands (" neighbouring," in the Pacific, means anything within three or four hundred miles) have plenty of these unpleasant inhabitants. The white men live on tinned food of various kinds, also bread, rice, fowls, pork, goat, and goat's milk. Vegetables or fruit are a rare and precious luxury, for the nearest island producing either lies a thousand miles away. Big yams, weighing a stone or two apiece and whitewashed to prevent decay, are sent up from the Cook Islands

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now and then; but the want of really fresh vegetable food is one of the trials of the island. It is not astonishing to hear that the salaries of the Malden officials are very high. A year or two on the island is a good way of accumulating some capital, since it is impossible to spend a penny.

The native labourers generally leave the island with the greatest joy, glad beyond expression to return to their sweet do-nothing lives at home. Why they undertake the work at all is one of the many puzzles presented by the Polynesian character. character. They have enough to eat and enough to wear, without doing any work to speak of, while they are at home. Usually the motive for going to Malden is the desire of making twenty-five pounds or so in a lump, to buy a bicycle (all South Sea Islanders have bicycles, and ride them splendidly) or to build a stone house. But in most cases the money is "spreed" away in the first two or three days at home, giving presents to everybody, and buying fine clothes at the trader's store.

So the product of the year's exile and hard work is simply a tour among the islands—in itself a strong attraction a horribly hot suit of shoddy serge, with a stiff white shirt, red socks, and red tie, bought up in Malden from the company out of the labourer's wages, and proudly worn on the day the schooner brings the wanderer home to his lightly clad relatives-a bicycle, perhaps, which soon becomes a scrap-heap; or, possibly a stone house which is never lived in. The company has the labour that it wants, and the money that the labour produces. Every one is satisfied with the bargain, doubtless; and the far-away British farmer and marketgardener are the people who are ultimately benefited.

CHAPTER XII

Pearl-fishing at Penrhyn-The Beautiful Golden-Edge-Perils of the Pearl Diver A Fight for Life-Visit to a Leper Island-A God-forsaken Place-How they kept the Corpses--The Woman who sinned-A Nameless Grave-On to Merry Manahiki—The Island of Dance and Song-Story of the Leper and his BirdGood-bye to the Duchess.

A

DAY or two after leaving Malden we sighted

Penrhyn, lying five degrees further south, but for some unexplained reason a very much hotter place than Malden. Penrhyn is an island that is famous all over the South Sea world, and not unknown even in Europe. Its pearl-shell and pearls, its strange, wild, semi-amphibious natives, and its melancholy leper station, make it a marked spot upon the Pacific map; and a certain rather fictitious value attaching to its stamps has made the name of the island familiar to all stamp collectors at home. The general impression conveyed to the voyager from kinder and fairer islands is that Penrhyn is a place at the back of God-speed," a lonely, sultry, windy, eerie spot, desolate and remote beyond description.

It is an atoll island, consisting merely of a strip of land some couple of hundred yards in width, enclosing a splendid lagoon nine miles long. The land is white coral gravel; nothing grows on it but cocoanut and pandanus and a few insignificant creepers. Fruit, vegetables, flowers, there are none. The natives live entirely on cocoanut and fish. They are nominally Christianised,

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but the veneer of Christianity is wearing uncommonly thin in places. They are reckless and daring to a degree, notable even among Pacific Islanders. Any Penrhyn man will attack a shark single-handed in its own element, and kill it with the big knife he usually carries. They are, beyond comparison, the finest swimmers in the world; it is almost impossible to drown a Penrhyn Islander. He will swim all day as easily as he will walk. You may often meet him out fishing, miles from shore, without a boat, pushing in front of him a small plank that carries his bait, lines, and catch. Some of the fish he most fancies seldom come to the surface. To catch these he baits his line, dives, and swims about underneath the water for a minute or two at a time, trailing the bait after him, and rising to the surface as often as a fish takes it.

Of his pearl-diving exploits I shall speak later. The deadly surf that breaks upon the outer reef has no terrors for him. Among the small boys of the island there is a favourite feat known as "crossing a hundred waves," which consists in diving through ninety-nine great rollers, just as they are about to break, and rushing triumphantly to shore on the back of the hundredth. The old warlike, quarrelsome character of the islanders no doubt originally due to scarcity of food --still lurks concealed under an outward show of civility. Penrhyn was the only South Pacific island I have visited where I did not care to walk alone in the bush without my little American revolver. The four or five white traders all keep firearms ready to hand in their stores. There has been no actual trouble of recent years, but there are narrow escapes from a free fight every now and then, and every man must hold himself ready for emergencies. It is only eight years since there was such