be home by June next for the summer, or we shall know the reason
why. For God's sake be well and jolly for the meeting. I shall be, I
believe, a different character from what you have seen this long while.
This cruise is up to now a huge success, being interesting, pleasant,
and profitable. The beachcomber is perhaps the most interesting
character here; the natives are very different, on the whole, from
Polynesians: they are moral, stand-offish (for good reasons), and
protected by a dark tongue. It is delightful to meet the few Hawaiians
(mostly missionaries) that are dotted about, with their Italian _brio_
and their ready friendliness. The whites are a strange lot, many of them
good, kind, pleasant fellows; others quite the lowest I have ever seen
even in the slums of cities. I wish I had time to narrate to you the
doings and character of three white murderers (more or less proven) I
have met. One, the only undoubted assassin of the lot, quite gained my
affection in his big home out of a wreck, with his New Hebrides wife in
her savage turban of hair and yet a perfect lady, and his three
adorable little girls in Rob Roy Macgregor dresses, dancing to the hand
organ, performing circus on the floor with startling effects of nudity,
and curling up together on a mat to sleep, three sizes, three attitudes,
three Rob Roy dresses, and six little clenched fists: the murderer
meanwhile brooding and gloating over his chicks, till your whole heart
went out to him; and yet his crime on the face of it was dark:
disembowelling, in his own house, an old man of seventy, and him drunk.

It is lunch-time, I see, and I must close up with my warmest love to
you. I wish you were here to sit upon me when required. Ah! if you were
but a good sailor! I will never leave the sea, I think; it is only there
that a Briton lives: my poor grandfather, it is from him I inherit the
taste, I fancy, and he was round many islands in his day; but I, please
God, shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded. Would you be
surprised to learn that I contemplate becoming a shipowner? I do, but it
is a secret. Life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep
among the chimney stacks and telegraph wires.

Love to Henry James and others near.--Ever yours, my dear fellow,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_Equator Town, Apemama, October 1889._

No _Morning Star_ came, however; and so now I try to send this to you by
the schooner _J. L. Tiernan