beautiful women with long red hair are seen to rise and bathe; only
(timid as mice) on the first sound of feet upon the coral they dive
again for ever. They are known to be healthy and harmless living
people, dwellers of an underworld; and the same fancy is current in
Tahiti, where also they have the hair red. Tetea is the Tahitian
name; the Paumotuan, Mokurea.




PART III: THE GILBERTS




CHAPTER I--BUTARITARI



At Honolulu we had said farewell to the Casco and to Captain Otis,
and our next adventure was made in changed conditions. Passage was
taken for myself, my wife, Mr. Osbourne, and my China boy, Ah Fu,
on a pigmy trading schooner, the Equator, Captain Dennis Reid; and
on a certain bright June day in 1889, adorned in the Hawaiian
fashion with the garlands of departure, we drew out of port and
bore with a fair wind for Micronesia.

The whole extent of the South Seas is a desert of ships; more
especially that part where we were now to sail. No post runs in
these islands; communication is by accident; where you may have