floundering helplessly off the coast of Peru, from where she worked north in an encouraging fashion until a sudden jump landed her in the Colorado desert. She was perilously near being stranded on Catalina at the end of the second dog-watch, and it was the reckoning after this one—magnetic variation and a few other essentials being finally included—that checked with the Dead-reckoning and put the poor wanderer where she belonged. Day by day, navigation became simpler work after that titanic struggle, until, the morning we sighted the island of Hawaii, I saw the Commodore take and work out in ten minutes an observation which told him in which direction the harbour of Hilo was located.

Besides navigating and directing the sailing of the yacht, the Commodore always stood one of the night watches and at other times held himself ready to appear on deck at any emergency. It was a stiff undertaking, having suddenly to face the prospect of eight or ten months of day and night work on a small schooner in the treacherous South Pacific; but the Commodore buckled down to it with the enthusiasm of a youngster and carried it through with flying colours, as will be seen.

My own work was confined to the nominal duties of Volunteer Weather Observer for the U. S. Hydrographic Office,—a branch of the Bureau of Equipment of the Navy—occasional tricks at the wheel, and falling into line now and then at the tail of a sheet or halyard when "all hands and the cook" failed to muster sufficient power amongst them. As Weather Observer I became for eight months a small cog in the very comprehensive system by which the Hydrographic Office is gathering data on currents, winds, clouds, waves, storms, temperatures, etc., from all of the sailed-in sea-ways of the world to assist in perfecting its monthly weather charts on which—as the result of the accumulated observations of many years—the probable meteorological conditions likely to prevail at any given point are recorded. Twice a day I took the temperature of the air and water, recorded the direction and force of the wind—the latter on a scale of 1 to 10, from a calm to a full gale—the set and height of the seas, and on a circular chart of the heavens indicated which of the various kinds of clouds—nimbus, cirrus, cumulus, etc.—prevailed at the time in each of the twelve divisions into which it was divided. The difference between the position of the yacht by Dead-reckoning—that is, figured by the log and compass—and the position by Observation gave the direction and speed of the ocean current at that point. These data were set down in a little booklet, containing a page for each day of the month, which, when filled, was mailed to the San Francisco branch of the Hydrographic Office. (The monthly weather charts for the Pacific, with which we had been supplied through the courtesy of this office, proved most valuable for those latitudes which were crossed by regular trade routes, and in which, as a consequence, comprehensive observations extending over some years had been taken; but in the little-sailed latitudes of the South Pacific—many stretches of which are still unploughed by a keel for years at a time—they were, naturally, fragmentary and of little practical use.)

We often have been asked if time did not hang very heavily on our hands in the long, unbroken fifteen, twenty and even thirty day intervals between ports. Perhaps this will be as good a place as any to answer that question. For the Commodore and myself I will register an emphatic "No," while a partial list of the activities of the ladies, will, I think, answer for the balance of the passengers.

In comparison with Claribel, once those dreadful spells of post-departure indisposition had trailed away into bad memories, every one on the yacht—not excepting the cook and the Commodore—was a drone and a loafer. Her quenchless energy found expression in musical, linguistic, literary, culinary and manual activities throughout the voyage. A guitar and a banjo held the boards to Hawaii, where a eukelele was annexed and mastered, after which, group by group and island by island, every form of native musical instrument from hollow-tree tom-toms and war conches to coco shell rattles and shark's hide tambourines was taken up in turn and blown, beaten, shaken or twanged into yielding its full capacity of soul-stirring harmony. Most of these instruments she even rebuilt or imitated with good success. Vocally (Claribel has a really fine voice) simple ballads of the "tenderness-and-pathos, pull-at-the-heart-strings" type were favoured until our arrival at Hilo, where "Aloha-oe" and various swinging hulas had their turn; these giving way to plaintive Marquesan sonatas, rollicking Tahitian himines, lilting Samoan serenades and booming Fijian war-chants, as, one after another, these various isles of enchantment were put behind us. Her terpsichorean achievements were equally varied and multitudinous, for there were few poses in the primer postures of the hula-hula and the siva-siva that she did not imitate and embroider upon in a manner to awaken the envy of the nimble Fof-iti, the première danseuse of the court of King Pomare, or even of the sinuous Seuka, the peerless taupo who led the dance in the thatch palace of Chief Mauga at Pago-Pago.

When I mention that in addition to these things the indefatigable Claribel also set up a "native crafts" shop in the starboard lifeboat, where she produced wooden gods, shark-tooth necklaces, tortoise-shell combs (genuine shell), war clubs and axes, carved coco shells, tappa cloth and similar "tourist" curios of a character to defy detection (by us) and at a cost (figuring her time as worth nothing) effectively to defy native competition; that she read Goethe and Heine (complete) in German, and all of the 200 or more volumes in the yacht's library, including several works on navigation, ship-building and astronomy, as well; that she made herself a dozen or more tropical dresses (not native, but full-sized garments); that she mastered the technique of my typewriter and wrote a voluminous journal upon it, manifolding some scores of copies to send to friends at home; that she played the gramophone for us whenever the yacht was steady enough to allow that sensitive instrument to keep an even keel;—when I mention all of these various spheres of activity in which Claribel circulated, and then admit that I have still left the list incomplete for want of space, it will readily be seen that time had little chance to hang heavily on her nimble hands and that she had scant opportunity to learn the meaning of that hackneyed term, "the monotony of the voyage."

The Mater, when she was not being whirled in the back-wash of the comet-like wake of Claribel's multudinous activities, spent her time in quiet dignity with knitting or embroidery, reading and solitaire; but when the demon of ennui threatened to raise its Gorgon head in the form of an interval of idleness, the both of them would turn to and write "items of interest" for the "Ladies' Log," a diurnal record of feminine impressions de voyage which spared no one in the cabin, galley or fo'c'sl'—not even the editors themselves—in its trenchant columns of comment. I shall have occasion, doubtless, not infrequently to quote from its scintillant pages.

On the run from San Pedro to Hawaii our course was at first directed somewhat more southerly than the straight one to Hilo in the hope of the sooner intercepting the Northeast Trades, which, according to the government weather charts, should ordinarily be met with somewhere in the vicinity of the 27th parallel. During the morning watch of the 8th our expectations appeared to be realized. Just as