We were to anchor first in the New Britain Group, and stop over night, ship a quantity of copra, and then proceed to the Ellice group, "blackbirding." In the second dog watch, just before it got dark one evening, the lookout hailed the deck with the welcome cry, "Land on!"
It was the island we were bound for, and from aloft could be seen, as a thin dark line just above the horizon that looked no bigger than a ship's "biscuit."
It was almost calm. The schooner forging ahead slowly, pushed along almost by the send of the swell and the weight of her canvas as it flapped forward, rather than by any real wind there was. Captain Dane took the bearings of the land, and that night we drifted quietly towards it, daylight finding us about five miles off the shore, which shone in the sun against a background of dark tropical vegetation and great palm trees.
I was at the wheel, and I could not help noticing that the captain got fidgety as we neared the island. His wife was lying in a chair under the temporary awning we had rigged up for her—looking towards the island as we neared it.
"Oh! I ean see a lot of canoes!—and people!" she said.
"Fishing!" muttered the skipper.
"There's one little canoe with only one fisher in it—oh, a long way nearer to us than the others."
"Man or woman?" asked the captain.
"How stupid you are? How can I tell at this distance? They all look alike."
Dane took the glasses from his wife—a bit roughly, I thought—and raised them to his eyes. He looked steadily, and long—and then holding the glasses out to his wife to take—without looking at her—walked forward a little and stood with his back to her, gazing up aloft.
"What do you make out?" she asked.
