HOW am I to overtake events? On Wednesday, as soon as my
mail was finished, I had a wild whirl to look forward to.
Immediately after dinner, Belle, Lloyd and I, set out on
horseback, they to the club, I to Haggard's, thence to the
hotel where I had supper ready for them. All next day we
hung round Apia with our whole house-crowd in Sunday array,
hoping for the mail steamer with a menagerie on board. No
such luck; the ship delayed; and at last, about three, I had
to send them home again, a failure of a day's pleasuring that
does not bear to be discussed. Lloyd was so sickened that he
returned the same night to Vailima, Belle and I held on, sat
most of the evening on the hotel verandah stricken silly with
fatigue and disappointment, and genuine sorrow for our poor
boys and girls, and got to bed with rather dismal
appreciations of the morrow.

These were more than justified, and yet I never had a jollier
day than Friday 27th. By 7.30 Belle and I had breakfast; we
had scarce done before my mother was at the door on
horseback, and a boy at her heels to take her not very
dashing charger home again. By 8.10 we were all on the
landing pier, and it was 9.20 before we had got away in a
boat with two inches of green wood on the keel of her, no
rudder, no mast, no sail, no boat flag, two defective
rowlocks, two wretched apologies for oars, and two boys - one
a Tongan half-caste, one a white lad, son of the Tonga
schoolmaster, and a sailor lad - to pull us. All this was
our first taste of the tender mercies of Taylor (the
sesquipidalian half-caste introduced two letters back, I