ss. This captain
was as good a seaman as ever trod a deck, and had had a rather long
experience of the island trade, but a mule could not surpass him in
obstinacy, as I was soon to learn, to my sorrow.

A week after leaving the Tokelaus, we dropped anchor on the edge of the
reef of one of the Gilbert Group, to land supplies for a trader living
there. The coast was very exposed to all but an easterly wind, and
neither the mate nor myself liked the idea of anchoring at all. The
skipper, however, brought his vessel close in to the roaring breakers
on the reef, let go his anchor in six fathoms, and then neatly backed
astern into blue water sixty fathoms deep. Here we lay apparently safe
enough, for the time, the wind being easterly and steady.

By sunset we had finished landing stores and shipping cargo, and when
the captain came off in the last boat, we naturally expected him to
heave up and get out of such a dangerous place, but to our surprise he
remarked carelessly that as the men were very tired, he would hold on
until daylight.

"I wouldn't risk it if I were you," said the trader, who had come aboard
in his own boat to "square up." "You can't depend on this easterly
breeze holding all night, and it may come on squally from the west or
south-west in a few hours, and take you unawares."

"Bosh!" was the reply. "Hoist the boats up, Mr. Laird, and tell the men
to get supper."

"Very well, sir," replied the mate, none too cheerfully.

Just as the trader was going ashore, he said to me aside, quietly, "This
little monkey-faced skipper is a blazing idiot" (our captain was a very,
very little man). "I told him again just now, that if the wind comes
away from west or south-west, or even if it falls calm, he'll find he's
caught, to a dead certainty. But he as good as told me to mind my own
business."

Naturally enough I was anxious. I had on board trade goods which had
cost L1,100, and of course had not one penny of insurance on them. The
brigantine, however, was well insured, though I do not impute this fact
as being the cause of the captain's neglect of a sensible warning.

After supper, the captain turned in, while the mate and I, both feeling
very uneasy, paced the deck till about nine o'clock, at which hour the
wind had become perceptibly lighter, and the captain was called. He came
on deck, trotted up and down in his pyjamas for a few minutes, sat on
the rail, like a monkey on a fence, and then asked the mate sna