Our cure was completed at the isle of Katafanga. It is quite a large isle and inhabited by more natives. But we hit upon a stretch of shore that seemed permanently deserted. At any rate, we remained there for five days and saw not a soul. When we went ashore, we all walked with a comical staggering gait. You know the characteristic rolling gait of the sailor accustomed to having a deck under his feet? Ours was an exaggeration of it. After two weeks in our constantly pitching boat and never a foot on land, we could not get our legs used to solid, unmoving earth. Even after five days of extensive pedestrianism on the beach we rolled along rather than walked. There was plenty of fruit around, and many streams ran down to the sea. We ate enough fruit to expel all the scurvy in the world and bathed luxuriously in the clear water. On the island was a deserted house. We inspected it and saw that it had been owned by a German planter. We afterward learned that, at the outbreak of the war, the planter fled to the interior of the island, and an Englishman had taken possession of his house, then, not liking the island, had left it pretty much to itself. Among the rubbish in the house was a German mercantile magazine, and on the first page that I turned to I saw an advertisement of the paint firm of Erdmann and Kircheiss. One of our sailors was named Erdmann and my lieutenant was named Kircheiss. No relations of the paint firm, but we took it as a good omen. At any rate, coming upon the planter's house was certainly good luck. It had gone to seed a bit, but there still were Christian beds in it. For the first time since sailing away from Mopelia, we slept comfortably, and between sheets, too. We were now getting near the larger islands of the Fiji group, where the sailing ships loaded with copra would be encountered. If we did not succeed in capturing a ship here, we never could hope to capture one. We found a handsome little sailboat belonging to the Englishman who had taken over the German's house, but we left her where she lay. She was more comfortable than our battered old lifeboat--but the latter was a last relic of our old _Seeadler_. She had brought us this far, so we wanted to keep her until we had captured a ship. We raised sail, knowing that, for better or for worse, we were on the last leg of our voyage in the lifeboat. We came to the main body of the Fijis, and sailed into a large gulf surrounded by distant islands. It was night, and we decided to wait till morning to see how many ships were passing and what island they were bound for. We reefed our sails and threw out our sea anchor, that sacklike drag of canvas that keeps a boat from turning broadside to the wind and waves and from drifting too fast. We lay down for a decent night's sleep. We would need all our energies for the morrow.