seems
pretty high, and give me directions about making a pudding with
molasses, etc.' In the midst of heavy dangerous weather, when I was
lying on the floor in utter misery, down comes the mate with a cracked
head, and I must needs cut off the blood-clotted hair, wash and dress
the wound, and administer restoratives. I do not like being the 'lady
of the yacht,' but ashore--oh, then I feel I am repaid for all!"

Even Louis himself, lover of the sea though he was, was forced to
acknowledge that under some circumstances his capricious mistress had
her unpleasant moods. "The sea," he writes to Sidney Colvin, "is a
terrible place, stupefying to the mind and poisonous to the
temper--the motion, the lack of space, the cruel publicity, the
villainous tinned foods, the sailors, the passengers." Again he
remarks concerning the food: "Our diet had been from the pickle tub or
out of tins; I had learned to welcome shark's flesh for a variety; and
an onion, an Irish potato, or a beefsteak had been long lost to sense
and dear to aspiration."

But the glamour of romance and the joy of seeing her husband gaining
strength hour by hour made all these annoyances seem things of small
account, and, just as the time spent at Hyeres was the happiest in
Louis's life, so these South Sea days were the best of all for her.

It had been decided that their first landfall should be at the
Marquesas, a group which lay quite out of the beaten track of travel,
three thousand miles from the American coast. Peacefully the days
slipped by, with no event to record, until, on July 28, 1888, their
first tropic island rose out of the sea and sent them in greeting a
breeze laden with the perfume of a thousand strange flowers. They
first dropped anchor in Anaho Bay, Nukahiva Island, which, except for
one white trader, was occupied solely by natives, but lately converted
from cannibalism. As both Stevenson and his wife were citizens of the
world in their sympathies, it was not long before they were on terms
of perfect friendliness with the inhabitants. Soon after landing, Mrs.
Stevenson's housekeeping instincts came to the front, and she set to
work to learn something about the native cookery. Her mother-in-law
writes:

"Fanny was determined to get lessons in the proper making of 'kaku,'
so went ashore armed with a bowl and beater. Kaku is baked breadfruit,
with a sauce of cocoanut cream, which is made by beating up the soft
pulp of the green nut with the ju