ld, or
go back the way they had come; the distance and the accommodations and
outlay of time would be just the same, whichever of the two routes they
might elect to take. Think of it: a projected excursion of five hundred
miles gradually enlarged, without any elaborate degree of intention, to a
possible twenty-four thousand. However, they were used to extensions by
this time, and did not mind this new one much.

And we had with us a lawyer from Victoria, who had been sent out by the
Government on an international matter, and he had brought his wife with
him and left the children at home with the servants and now what was to
be done? Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks? Most
certainly not. They decided to go on, to the Fiji islands, wait there a
fortnight for the next ship, and then sail for home. They couldn't
foresee that they wouldn't see a homeward-bound ship again for six weeks,
and that no word could come to them from the children, and no word go
from them to the children in all that time. It is easy to make plans in
this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote
oceans it is noticeable that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about
the same. There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of
values.

There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in the shade of
the awnings and look at the distant shore. We lay in luminous blue
water; shoreward the water was green-green and brilliant; at the shore
itself it broke in a long white ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that
we could hear. The town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked
like a cushion of moss. The silky mountains were clothed in soft, rich
splendors of melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled in
slanting mists. I recognized it all. It was just as I had seen it long
before, with nothing of its beauty lost, nothing of its charm wanting.

A change had come, but that was political, and not visible from the ship.
The monarchy of my day was gone, and a republic was sitting in its seat.
It was not a material change. The old imitation pomps, the fuss and
feathers, have departed, and the royal trademark--that is about all that
one could miss, I suppose. That imitation monarchy, was grotesque
enough, in my time; if it had held on another thirty years it would have
been a monarchy without subjects of the king's race.

We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the se