priated, for Tim’s benefit, some of the lumps of coal still lying about. Then every day before dinner the men enjoyed what must have been truly a glorious sport. They would put on their oldest rig—I am afraid my presence aboard was a sad drawback here—dive from the bowsprit into the clear, dancing blue below, and there swim and tumble about like so many dolphins, chasing each other round and under the vessel, and vigorously splashing the while to keep the sharks away. With what envy I watched them—I who could not swim! They used to try and persuade me to jump overboard and join them, promising not to let me drown, but I never had the nerve. I have been sorry for it ever since.
Then there was work to be done. The Tikirau had her hull painted during this enforced “lay-up,” and went out of Hicks Bay looking more of a snowy sea-swallow than ever. And there was a settler to be “removed” from his old house on one side of the bay to his new one on the other. We removed him; sitting patiently in the whaleboat while his beds and tables and chairs came casually down the breakneck track—some of them on a sledge, more of them off it—feasting upon apples from his orchard, which we roasted at a fire kindled on the rocks; and being feasted on in turns by multitudes of mosquitoes, who seemed to have been keeping Lent for years. It was the only place upon the coast where we met them, and the meeting was one they must have thoroughly enjoyed.
Phil, by the way, told a rather good mosquito yarn on this occasion. “Two skippers,” he said, “were having a kind of a talk about the mosquitoes
