ndmarks in the pleasant town of Apia, my memory rests first
on the little school just back of the London Missionary Society
coffee-house and reading-rooms, where Mrs. Bell taught English to
about a hundred native children, boys and girls. Brighter children you
will not find anywhere.

"Now, children," said Mrs. Bell, when I called one day, "let us show
the captain that we know something about the Cape Horn he passed in
the _Spray_" at which a lad of nine or ten years stepped nimbly
forward and read Basil Hall's fine description of the great cape, and
read it well. He afterward copied the essay for me in a clear hand.

Calling to say good-by to my friends at Vailima, I met Mrs. Stevenson
in her Panama hat, and went over the estate with her. Men were at work
clearing the land, and to one of them she gave an order to cut a
couple of bamboo-trees for the _Spray_ from a clump she had planted
four years before, and which had grown to the height of sixty feet. I
used them for spare spars, and the butt of one made a serviceable
jib-boom on the homeward voyage. I had then only to take ava with the
family and be ready for sea. This ceremony, important among Samoans,
was conducted after the native fashion. A Triton horn was sounded to
let us know when the beverage was ready, and in response we all
clapped hands. The bout being in honor of the _Spray_, it was my turn
first, after the custom of the country, to spill a little over my
shoulder; but having forgotten the Samoan for "Let the gods drink," I
repeated the equivalent in Russian and Chinook, as I remembered a word
in each, whereupon Mr. Osbourne pronounced me a confirmed Samoan. Then
I said "Tofah!" to my good friends of Samoa, and all wishing the
_Spray_ _bon voyage_, she stood out of the harbor August 20, 1896, and
continued on her course. A sense of loneliness seized upon me as the
islands faded astern, and as a remedy for it I crowded on sail for
lovely Australia, which was not a strange land to me; but for long
days in my dreams Vailima stood before the prow.

The _Spray_ had barely cleared the islands when a sudden burst of the
trades brought her down to close reefs, and she reeled off one hundred
and eighty-four miles the first day, of which I counted forty miles of
current in her favor. Finding a rough sea, I swung her off free and
sailed north of the Horn Islands, also north of Fiji instead of south,
as I had intended, and coasted down the west side of the archipel