I must tell you about a wonderful effect of phosphorescence which I have seen on the last two nights while looking down from my window to the lovely little bay. On Sunday the 11th there had been violent thunderstorms, with vivid lightning and downpours of rain, leaden skies, and a bright-green sea. So heavy were the rain-storms that the whole bay was discoloured by the red mud washed down by the streamlets—a strange contrast to its usually faultless crystalline green. I chanced to look out about 11 P.M., and saw the whole bay glowing with pale white light; and fiery wavelets rippled right up beneath the trees and round the rocks, which stood out sharp and black. The effect was of a sea of living light, and as I beheld it, framed by dark trees, with tall flowering aloes cutting black against the dazzling light, it was a weird and wonderful scene. For about ten minutes I watched it entranced, then it slowly faded away, and the scene was changed to dense obscurity. Last night I looked out at the same hour, and saw nothing but darkness, but about midnight I was awakened by a deafening crash of thunder, followed by heavy rain. I guessed this would stir up whatever creatures caused the strange pallid light. Perhaps they are disturbed by the rain-drops, or perhaps they receive a small electric shock which starts them all dancing. Whatever be the cause, the result proved as I expected. Ere I could reach the window, the bay was illuminated by tiny ripples of fire, which gradually increased in size and number till all was one blaze of glowing dazzling light. This lasted for about five minutes, and then died completely away. * * * * * _March 4._ The Fiji mail has brought us most sad news—namely, the death from dysentery of Mrs Macgregor, the last remaining of our original sisterhood. I was with her the very day we left Levuka, and within six weeks she had passed away, leaving one wee lassie, little Nell, about three years old, also an older boy in Scotland. It seems such a little while since we watched Mrs de Ricci pass away from the same dread illness. And now we hear that Mr Eyre is very ill at Nasova, and that he must be sent here on sick-leave as soon as he can be moved. Colonel Pratt was invalided some time ago, and has been for some weeks in Auckland. Sir George invited him to come here, and we expected him by several successive steamers, but each time he was too ill to come; once he fainted twice in one day. Certainly he ought not to risk returning to Fiji. It seems too foolish—and poor Mrs Macgregor’s death is a terrible warning of how little resistance to dysentery can be made by a constitution when once enfeebled by the climate, and Colonel Pratt has long felt it to be trying and exhausting.[52] CHAPTER XXIV.