While we had been talking the topmasts were lowered, which I did not quite understand, and the fires drawn, and soon I was alone on deck, with a solitary watchman forward. There was no moon but under the soft light of the stars, low-hung and with a brilliancy seen only at or near the equator, I sat in silent wonder and admiration for hours. I was up again before it was full daylight and watched the lowering of the Queen’s launch. She appeared with the sun, accompanied by a Dyak woman whom I had not seen before, and we landed at a little stone dock in front of the village. All of the inhabitants, consisting of about fifty English and Scotch men and women, some with silvered locks and bent backs, and some of them crippled by the pirates, and nearly as many natives, crowded the pier to meet her, their manner one of the greatest affection and deference. We walked through the village, which was a model of neatness, and on up a winding path for nearly a mile, when a sharp turn around a flank of the mountain brought us to a large bungalow--the palace of the Queen. It was so situated that it could not be seen from the sea, at any point, but just around the turn and not fifty yards from the house was a deep shadowed bower from which there was a clear view of the ocean for two-thirds of the way around the compass. This was the outside sitting-room of the Queen and here breakfast was served. While it was being prepared she made herself more beautiful by changing her dress of European style for a native costume of flowing silk so becoming that I wondered at her ever wearing anything else. After breakfast she looked down at the little town and far out to sea in silence for a long time, and then told me the story of her life. Her name, she said, was Katherine Crofton. Her father was one of the younger branches of a family which was headed by a Baron. The family crest was a sheaf of wheat and the motto “God grants the increase.” Her branch of the family had lived in the south of Ireland for several generations. Another branch had long lived at Derry Willow in the County Leitrim. Her father was a lieutenant commander in the British Navy and to prevent an accident he disobeyed the order of an incompetent and arrogant superior officer. In a quarrel that followed her father knocked his superior down and otherwise abused him, for which he was court-martialled and dismissed.