CAPTAIN LONG, COMMANDER OF THE HAWAIIAN STEAMER THE KILAUEA 90 MR. JOHN PATY'S BUNGALOW AT HONOLULU 98 STARBOARD SIDE OF THE GIG AFTER HER EVENTFUL JOURNEY 102 DECK VIEW OF THE GIG AFTER HER EVENTFUL JOURNEY 102 WILLIAM HALFORD, COXSWAIN, THE ONLY SURVIVOR OF THE GIG'S CREW 110 (He is now a retired chief gunner in the Navy) THE TABLET NOW ON THE WALLS OF THE CHAPEL AT THE UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY AT ANNAPOLIS 119 THE LAST CRUISE OF THE SAGINAW I THE BEGINNING OF THE CRUISE During the winter of 1869-70 the United States Steamer Saginaw was being repaired at the Mare Island Navy Yard, and her officers and crew were recuperating after a cruise on the west coast of Mexico,--a trying one for all hands on board as well as for the vessel itself. The "Alta-Californian" of San Francisco published the following soon after our return from the Mexican coast. It is all that need be said of the cruise. We were all very glad to have it behind us and forget it. The Saginaw, lately returned from the Mexican coast, had a pretty severe experience during her short cruise. At Manzanillo she contracted the coast fever, a form of remittent, and at one time had twenty-five cases, but a single death, however, occurring. On the way up, most of the time under sail, the machinery being disabled, the voyage was so prolonged that when she arrived at San Francisco there was not a half-day's allowance of provisions on board and for many days the officers had been on "ship's grub." Our repairs and refitting were but preliminary to another (and the last) departure of the Saginaw from her native land. Our captain, Lieutenant-Commander Montgomery Sicard, had received orders to proceed to the Midway Islands, _via_ Honolulu, and to comply with instructions that will appear later in these pages. (I should explain here that the commanding officer of a single vessel is usually addressed as "Captain," whatever his real rank may be, and I shall use that term throughout my narrative.) [Illustration: U.S. STEAMER SAGINAW--FOURTH-RATE Built at the Navy Yard, Mare Island, California, in 1859] In a northwesterly direction from the Sandwich Islands there stretches for over a thousand miles a succession of coral reefs and shoals, with here and there a sandy islet thrown up by the winds and waves. They are mostly bare of vegetation beyond a stunted growth of bushes. These islets are called "atolls" by geographers, and their foundations are created by the mysterious "polyps" or coral insects. These atolls abound in the Pacific Ocean, and rising but a few feet above the surface, surrounded by uncertain and uncharted currents, are the dread of navigators.