THE CRUISE OF THE ' JANET NICHOL.'*

THIS diary by Mrs. R. L. Stevenson is a book for Stevensonians to acid to their library. So much that is untrue—what so futile as uninformed worship of a literary hero P—has been written about Stevenson's life in and about Samoa that Mrs. Stevenson has done well to publish this diary. She says that all the books " With Stevenson" here and " With Stevenson" there are wrong in almost every particular. She indicates as a typical misstatement a story of bow she made a flag for a native King, Tembinolca, on the beach at Apemama. As a mutter of fact, the flag was designed on board the schooner

Equator'—about the cruise of which we have read in Stevenson's own words—and was made "in the most prosaic manner" by a firm in Sydney. " Contrary to the general idea," she says, " my husband was a man of few intimate friends, and even with these be was reticent to a degree." The story of the flag, however, is much more romantic than the warning words from Mrs. Stevenson suggest. As told in tbis diary it is a really beautiful episode in Stevenson's relations with the natives.

The Janet Nichol' was an iron-screw trading schooner, and Stevenson, his wife, and his stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, profited by her vague wanderings to enjoy what was, in effect, such a yachting cruise as it falls to few people to experience. Apart from the Stevenson family, the great character of the ship's company was undoubtedly Mr. Buekland, a trader who was known as Tin Jack, and who appears in Stevenson's story, The Wrecker, as To - mmy Hadden. Mrs. Stevenson tells us that he was a "beautiful creature, terribly annoying at times, but with something child-like and appealing—I think be was close to what the Scotch call a natural—that made one forgive pranks in him that would be unforgivable in others." Tin Jack was so proud of appearing in The Wrecker that he carried the book with him wherever be went. One can understand bow this strange man tickled Stevenson's fancy. He had a fixed income of his own, but he always spent it so rapidly that be

• The Cruise Of the Janet Nichol' among the South Bea Isiands. A Diary by

Virs. Robert Louis 13b:m.2..4os. Wiudus. [7a. ecl. uet.]

traded in the South Seas to add to it. Whenever be returned to Sydney it was his favourite practice to hire a hansom for the day, put the driver inside and drive round, calling upon the passers-by to join him at the nearest public-house. His end was a tragedy. His trustee levanted with his regular source of income, and Tin Jack with a pistol blew out what little brains he had. In a sense, Tin Jack sets the note of this happy diary. The party went with the hearts of children, but—always excepting Tin Jaok—with the brains of grown men. Mrs. Stevenson apologizes for the "minute description, almost like a catalogue, of the articles in the different build- ings in the island of Suwarrow." But by Stevensonians this sort of thing will be found deeply interesting., We see the understanding wife keeping the rough record to which the alchemy of Stevenson's art would later be applied. He loved catalogues of new and strange things, but be also loved catalogues of familiar things when they presented a scene.

Readers of The Wrecker may remember as an example the description of the common articles of a seaman's life found in the cabin of the wrecked vessel—all simple things, but tell- tale in the highest degree in the use Stevenson makes of them.

To us the surest proof of the happiness Mrs. Stevenson

experienced in the cruise was her growing desire to own an island. Most men of a romantic turn have longed to own an island ; to live in it and rule it, or perhaps rather to live in it without rule. A woman at once sees the almost fatal practical disadvantages. A man in boredom, or in annoyance with his usual life, or in a time of strain, longs for an island as a way of escape. To a woman it is, on the contrary, happiness—a sense of strength and confidence to overcome new and great difficulties—that makes an island seem possible. Thus Mrs. Stevenson writes of Sunday Island :- " Sunday is the island where an Amerioan family once took up their residence, remaining until it began to blow up. Some settlers have lately gone there. Lloyd reminds me that this was the place Louis and he once proposed to try and get possession of, and I refused to hear of the plan because of the volcano and the hordes of rats that infest the place. I repented when I saw it, and my heart is now set upon owning an island."

Again :— " The desire to own an island is still burning in my breast. In this neighbourhood, nearer Samoa, is just the island I want, owned, unfortunately, by a man in Tahiti. It is called Nassau and is said to bo uninhabited."

The diary gives us both encouragement and discouragement for the business of owning an island, but we do not find that Mrs. Stevenson repented. Here, for instance, is encourage- ment :— " At about three o'clock we sighted an island known by various names—Swayne's Island, Quires, or Olesenga—a small, round, low island surrounding a triangular brackish lagoon like an ornamental lake in a park. It is inhabited by a half-caste man known as King Jennings, his family, and about eighty people from different islands. The original Jennings was an American who married a Samoan wife. He left Samoa in a huff after having built a man- of-war for the government, for which payment was refused. As the motive power of the ship came from wooden paddle-wheels, turned with a crank by hand, it is hardly surprising that the complaint of her extreme slowness and the great labour involved in working her should have been brought forward as reasons for non-payment. She bad a complete armament of great guns and all the equipments of a proper man-of-war. Jennings, in a fury of indignation and disappointment, shook the dust of Samoa off his feet, and with his wife and family set up a little kingdom of his own in Quires. Here he blew out a passage through the reef, built two schooners of island wood, floated them off with barrels, and sold them to the German firm at Samoa. A flag was hoisted on Quires, the stars and stripes, with what appeared to be a dove in the field. We asked with some curiosity what the dove indicated. They told us that a night-bird came and cried about the settle- ment for months ; this was supposed to bode sickness ; so to pro- pitiate the ill-omened bird it was added to the flag. There is a good road on the island, excellent houses, a church, and a school- house containing an imported half-caste schoolmaster. From tall building used for storing copra men were already laying a temporary wooden track down to the landing for the copra trucks to run upon."

But here is another picture which might well warn off all

prospective island-owners except the very happiest—at least if the coveted island be in the South Seas :— " We expect to make Funafuti, the first of the Ellice's, by day- break ; at nine o'clock there was no sign of the island. Bad steering,' growled the captain. We've run past it, and now we have to turn round and run back.' At about two we anchor in the lagoon, and almost immediately the traders are aboard, two wretglual-looking objects. One was a half-caste from some other island, with elephantiasis, very bad, in both logs. There were recant scarifications as though he had been attempting the Samoan plan of tapping. The other trader was not thin but the most bloodless creature I ever saw ; his face, hands, legs, and feet were without sunburn, smooth, and of a curious transparent texture like wax. It seemed an over-exertion to raise his large, heavy eyes when he spoke to us. The two men had pulled the boat in which they came. Tho pallid one panted and held both hands over his heart as though suffering acutely. I asked him if he liked the island. 'Not at all,' he answered, and went on to describe the people ; he said he could not keep chickens, ducks, or pigs; no one could, for their neighbours, jealous that another should have what they had not, would stone the Creatures to death. The same with the planting of fruit-trees ; the soil was good, and there were a few breadfruits and bananas, but any attempt to grow more is frustrated. The young trees are torn up and even the old ones are occasionally broken and nearly destroyed. Before the great earthquake in Java there were plenty of good fish fit for eating. The half-caste can remember when a poisonous fish was a thing unknown; now all outside the reef are poisonous, and many inside. The worst of it is that a fish, to-day innocuous, may to-morrow become deadly. Turtle do not come to the islands at all; so there is no food besides copra except what chance vessels may bring. I fear this poor man is simply dying of starvation."

The Steveneons came across several beachcombers—those astonishing derelicts of civilization who rather than work put up with the comparative subjection to the natives which is implied in living on their bounty.

Fireworks were taken in the schooner to amuse the natives, but unfortunately these caught fire at the beginning of the voyage and nearly burnt the ship out. Tin Jack, in consonance with his eternal childishness, was both successful and un- successful with his antics in a false nose. Sometimes it amused, but once he caused a veritable panic, and bad not enough sense to desist. There is much we should like to quote, but we must end with the touching incident of Tembinoka's flag. When the party arrived at the King's island, bringing the flag, they received to their astonishment an insulting letter from him. This from one who was an old and tried friend. The authorship of the letter, though it was signed by the King, was traced to a white man. Stevenson courageously visited and demanded an apology from the King, who thereupon looked very black. But when the King was told that in the circumstances an English gentleman would apologize he did so handsomely. He was taken off in a boat

to the schooner, where the flag was broken out at the mast- head as he approached. He remained rather reticent, however, till he was alone in the cabin with the Stevensons. Then all the poison vanished from his mind :— " The moment that Mr. Henderson was gone the apathy that in these islands doth hedge in a king' broke down. The dear old man clasped Louis in one arm and me in the other and kissed us and wept over us for joy. He told us how, day after day, he looked through his glass out over the sea pretending to himself that he could see us coming back. Sometimes, he said, he deluded him- self so far that he beheld our very faces. This day he had been looking out as usual and was not surprised when our boat came near; he had seen it all like that before in his day-dreams. Suddenly he recognised a particular dress I wore that he had given me. 'Then I felt like this,' he said, making a gasping sound of surprise and emotion—` 0-o-oh V—and pressing his hand on his breast with a dramatic gesture. Often, he said, he made an errand over to his taro pits that he might look upon the place where our houses had stood. ' I too much sorry,' he said ; 'I want see you."