oris had in any of these islands, but they had plenty of stone, their
lances were tipped with obsidian, and they were terrible fighters among
themselves. They had no trees, and so no canoes; and they depended
on driftwood and the hibiscus for weapons. They are all done for now."

Captain Benson was still busied with his log when the steamship from
New Zealand arrived to take the shipwrecked men away. The El Dorado's
boat was stowed carefully on the deck of the liner. I saw the skipper
watching it as the deck-hands put chocks under it and made it fast
against the rolling of the ship. That boat deserved well of him,
for its stanchness had stood between him and the maws of the sharks
many days and nights.

I bade him and the two seamen good-by on the wharf. The old man was
full of his plan to exhibit the boat in a museum and of selling his
account of his adventures to a magazine.

The crew left on Easter Island were rescued sooner than they had
expected. A British tramp, the Knight of the Garter, put into Easter
Island for emergency repairs, having broken down. The castaways left
with her for Sydney, Australia, and from there reached San Francisco
by the steamship Ventura, ten months after they had sailed away on
the El Dorado. That schooner was never sighted again.

Chapter XI

I move to the Annexe--Description of building--The baroness and her
baby--Evoa and poia--The corals of the lagoon--The Chinese shrine--The
Tahitian sky.

Lovaina suggested, since I liked to be about the lagoon, that I move
to the Annexe, a rooming-house she owned and conducted as an adjunct
to the Tiare. I moved there, and regretted that I had stayed so long
in the animal-yard. And yet I should have missed knowing Lovaina
intimately, the hour-to-hour incidents of her curious menage, the
close contact with the girls and the guests, the El Dorado heroes,
the Dummy, and others.

The Annexe fronted the lagoon. It was a two-story building, with broad
verandas in front and rear, and stood back a few feet from the Broom
Road. It had a very large garden behind, with tall cocoanut trees,
and the finest rose-bushes in Tahiti. Vava, the Dummy, put all the
sweepings from his stable on the flower beds, and Lovaina cut the
roses for the tables at the Tiare Hotel and for presents to friends
and prosperous tourists. Vava was often about the garden, and drove
Lovaina to and fro in her old chaise.

When he brought me and my belongings from the Tiare, L