ceeded with their interminable lists and scorned the criticism of a
mere land-lubber. All conversation that was not of a nautical character
failed to hold their interest."

Cheered with strong hopes for Louis's future, the family departed for
San Francisco on the 28th of May, 1888. Their one regret was the good
friends they were leaving behind. This particularly affected Louis, but
he tried to hide his feelings by making all sorts of lively and
impossible proposals for their joining him later on.

His parting words to Mr. Low were: "There's England over there--and I've
left it--perhaps I may never go back--and there on the other side of
this big continent there's another sea rolling in. I loved the Pacific
in the days when I was at Monterey, and perhaps now it will love me a
little. I am going to meet it; ever since I was a boy the South Seas
have laid a spell upon me."

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE SOUTH SEAS

"Since long ago, a child at home,
I read and longed to rise and roam,
Where'er I went, what'er I willed,
One promised land my fancy filled.
Hence the long road my home I made;
Tossed much in ships; have often laid
Below the uncurtained sky my head,
Rain-deluged and wind buffeted;
And many a thousand miles I crossed,
And corners turned--love's labor lost,
Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
I came, not hoping, and like one
Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
And hailed my promised land with cries."

Once, while Louis was a discontented student at the University of
Edinburgh, the premier of New Zealand, Mr. Seed, spent an evening with
his father and talked about the South Sea Islands until the boy said he
was "sick with desire to go there."

From that time on a visit to that out-of-the-way corner of the earth was
a cherished dream, and he read everything he could lay hands on that
told about it.

While in California, the first time, Mr. Virgil Williams, an artist,
aroused his interest still more by the accounts of his own trip in the
South Seas.

Now his opportunity to see them had actually come. He already knew much
of the kind of places and people they were going among.

Three thousand miles across the open sea lay the Marquesas Islands, the
first group they hoped to visit, and it was for that port their
schooner, the _Casco_, turned her head when she was towed out of the
Golden Gate at dawn on the 28th of June.

Besides the family and a servant, Valentine Roch, w