iti, Samoa or the Sandwich Islands.

Entering the passage through the reef, we sailed slowly across the
splendid lagoon, whose waters were as calm as those of a lake, and
dropped anchor abreast of the principal village and quite near the ship
of the saints. She was a woe-begone, battered-looking old brig of two
hundred tons or so. She showed no colours in response to ours, and we
could see no one on deck. Presently, however, we saw a man emerge from
below, then a woman, and presently a second man, and in a few minutes
she showed the Ecuadorian flag. Then all three sat on chairs under the
ragged awning and stared listlessly at our ship.

Ah Sam came off from the shore and boarded us. He was a long, melancholy
Chinaman, had thirty-five hairs of a beard, and, poor fellow, was dying
of consumption. He told us the local news, and then I asked him
about the cargo of saints, many more of whom were now visible on the
after-deck of their disreputable old crate.

Ah Sam's thin lips parted in a ghastly smile, as he set down his whisky
and soda, and lit a cigar. We were seated under the awning, which had
just been spread, and so had a good view of the _Julia_.

The brig, he said, had managed to crawl into the lagoon three months
previously, and in working up to an anchorage struck on one of the coral
mushrooms with which the atoll is studded. Ah Sam and the two
white traders went off with their boats' crews of natives to render
assistance, and after some hours' hard work succeeded in getting her
off and towing her up to the spot where she was then anchored. Then the
saints gathered on the after-deck and held a thanksgiving meeting, at
the conclusion of which, the thirsty and impatient traders asked the
captain to give them and their boats' crews a few bottles of liquor in
return for their services in pulling his brig off the rocks, and when he
reproachfully told them that the _Julia_ was a temperance ship and that
drink was a curse and that God would reward them for their kindness,
they used most awful language and went off, cursing the captain and the
saints for a lot of mean blackguards and consigning them to everlasting
torments.

On the following day all the Hawaiian crew bolted on shore and took up
their quarters with the natives. The captain came on shore and tried to
get other natives in their place, but failed--for he had no money to pay
wages, but offered instead the privilege of becoming members of what Ah
Sam called