ched the shanty of a Chinese who had a wagon and a pair of horses.
"These she hired to take them to Tautira, the nearest village of any
size, a distance of sixteen miles over a road crossed by
one-and-twenty streams. Stevenson was placed in the cart, and,
sustained by small doses of coca, managed, with the help of his wife
and their servant, to reach his destination before he collapsed
altogether."[29]

[Footnote 29: _The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_, by
Graham Balfour.]

They found a house and made him as comfortable as possible. It was not
long before Princess Moe, ex-queen of Raiatea, and a most charming
person, heard of their arrival and came to see them. "I feel," writes
Mrs. Stevenson, "that she saved Louis's life. He was lying in a deep
stupor when she first saw him, suffering from congestion of the lungs
and a burning fever. She made him a dish of raw fish salad, the first
thing he had eaten for days; he liked it and began to pick up from
that day. As soon as he was well enough she invited us to live with
her in the house of Ori, the sub-chief of the village, and we gladly
accepted her invitation." There they lived as "in fairyland, the
guests of a beautiful brown princess."

When the _Casco_ had been brought around to Tautira it was discovered
in a peculiar way that their danger in the recent trip from Papeete
had been greater than they had realized. The elder Mrs. Stevenson gave
a feast on board to a number of native women, and during its progress
one of the women offered a prayer for their deliverance from the
perils of the sea, praying especially that if anything were wrong with
the ship it might be discovered in time. The elder Mrs. Stevenson had
tried in vain to persuade Captain Otis to go to church at the places
where they stopped. This time the church came to him and he couldn't
escape, but stood leaning disgustedly against the mast while the
prayer was said. After the visitors left he made some impatient
exclamation against "psalm-singing natives," and struck the mast a
hard blow with his fist. It went through into decayed wood, and the
captain was aghast. Mrs. Stevenson, on her part, was triumphant, and
she always loved to tell that story and dwell on the expression of
the scoffing captain's face as he saw a prayer answered. Both masts
were found to be almost entirely eaten out with dry-rot, and if either
had gone by the board off the reefs of any of the islands nothin