It is a singular thing that as I was packing up old papers ere I left Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland Sybil, when I was seventeen. She said I was to be very happy, to visit America, and _to be much upon the sea_. It seems as if it were coming true with a vengeance. Also, do you remember my strong, old, rooted belief that I shall die by drowning? I don't want that to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to me oddly, with these long chances in front. I cannot say why I like the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive to its perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet I love the sea as much as I hate gambling. Fine, clean emotions; a world all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest unflagging: there is upon the whole no better life. Yours ever, R. L. S. HONOLULU, April 6th, 1889. MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—The family seems to say I am the man, or rather, mine is the voice; for as to gratitude, we are all in a concatenation. Nobody writes a better letter than my gamekeeper; so gay, so pleasant, so engagingly particular, answering (by some delicate instinct) all the questions she suggests. It is a shame you should get such a poor return as I can make, from a mind essentially and originally incapable of the art epistolary. I would let the paper-cutter take my place; but I am sorry to say, the little wooden seaman did after the manner of seamen, and deserted in the Societies. The place he seems to have stayed at—seems, for his absence was not observed till we were near the Equator—was Tautira, and, I assure you, he displayed good taste, Tautira being as 'nigh hand heaven' as a paper-cutter or anybody has a right to expect. I think all our friends will be very angry with us, and I give the grounds of their probable displeasure bluntly—we are not coming home for another year. My mother returns next month. Fanny, Lloyd, and I push on again among the islands on a trading schooner, _The Equator_—first for the Gilbert group, which we shall have an opportunity to explore thoroughly; then, if occasion serve, to the Marshalls and Carolines; and if occasion (or money) fail, to Samoa, and back to Tahiti. I own we are deserters, but we have excuses. You cannot conceive how these climates agree with the wretched house-plant of Skerryvore; he wonders to find himself sea-bathing, and cutting about the world loose, like a grown-up person. They agree with Fanny too, who does not suffer from her rheumatism, and with Lloyd also. And the interest of the islands is endless, and the sea, though I own it is a fearsome place, is very delightful. We had applied for places in the American missionary ship, the _Morning Star_, but this trading schooner is a far preferable idea, giving us more time and a thousand-fold more liberty; so we determined to cut off the missionaries with a shilling.