I have seen too much of seafaring to be easily frightened on salt water, but I candidly admit that I was frightened then. In fact, when we got outside and she began to feel the swell, I took out my swimming-jacket and put it on, though, of course this was a pretty forlorn hope, as the water was swarming with sharks and the shortest swim would have been a couple of miles. Still, one always likes to take the last chance. Happily, she was English-built, and high in the bows, so she took nothing but spray over. Two or three green seas would have swamped her to a certainty, but they didn’t come, and so in time we got there. On board I renewed the acquaintance of the Commandant of Ile Nou, who was taking his wife and family to the Isle of Pines, which is to Caledonia as the Riviera is to Europe. At midday we stopped at Prony, the headquarters of the forest camps which I was to visit later on my return; and we lunched in the saloon with six inches of water on the floor. That was the first time I ever saw a steamer baled out with buckets. Still, they managed to get the water under somehow. There didn’t appear to be a pump on board. When we passed the reef, and started on the sixty-mile run through the open sea, some began to say their prayers and some said other things, but in the end we worried through, and just as the evening star was growing golden in the west we anchored in the lovely little Bay of Kuto. Never before had I heard the anchor chain rumble through the hawse-hole with greater thankfulness than I did then, and, judging by the limp and bedraggled look of every one, bond and free, who went ashore, I don’t think I was alone in hoping that I had seen the last of _La France_—which I hadn’t. My friend the Commandant introduced me to his _confrère_ of the Isle of Pines. He was not particularly sympathetic. I believe I was the only Englishman who had ever come to the island with authority to inspect his domains, and he didn’t take very kindly to the idea. Still, ruler and all as he was in his own land, the long arm of the Minister of Colonies reached even to the Isle of Pines, and, although he did not even offer me the usual courtesy of a glass of wine, he handed the credentials back to me, and said: “_Très bien, monsieur!_ If you will come and see me at nine o’clock to-morrow morning we will make arrangements. You will, I think, find accommodation at the canteen.” With that I took my leave, and went out into the darkness to find the canteen and some one to carry my luggage there. I found a surveillant, who found a _relégué_, and he shouldered my bag and found the canteen, the only semblance of an hotel on the island.