We soon met with a party of mountaineers, exceedingly fierce, who robbed us of our clothes, hardly leaving each one with a single garment, it not being in our power to prevent them, and leaving us exposed naked to the storm, without any shelter and perfectly ignorant of the road to the King’s town,[43] nor would any one of them be prevailed upon to show us the way. The savages soon left us and we proceeded on our way towards the town but from our ignorance of the right paths and the fury of the storm, our travelling was rendered exceedingly difficult and tiresome. The next morning, however, we found ourselves all safe in the King’s town. The King[44] and all the principal inhabitants had gone aboard the ship and the five that remained gave us the largest house where, without provisions of any kind and knowing our fate would not be determined until the arrival of the King and his men, we were forced to wait in a painful suspense two days. After the gale had abated, the King came up from the ship, having plundered her of everything except the salt provisions and bread, and after a consultation with his priests and warriors, he proclaimed that our lives should be spared, that houses should be prepared for us and that we might be permitted to secure what provisions from the ship we could. After hearing this law passed by the King and feeling confident it would be violated on no account, without his orders, our minds were greatly relieved and our spirits, which had been greatly depressed with our misfortunes, rose high with the hope of once more seeing our native country and leaving these savage shores where we had experienced, from the time we first arrived among them, so much trouble and so many misfortunes. The King having lent us one of his large canoes, with which and our small boat (the only one sav’d from the wreck) we proceeded down to the ship for provisions. We found the natives greatly excited with their prize. The chief, however (who was on board when we struck), received us very well and gave us permission to take anything we pleased; but the natives had destroyed almost everything they had not carried off. Every part of her was ransacked and torn to pieces; the hull cut and hacked for the purpose of getting the iron work, and with pain we saw our unfortunate ship in a most wretched and miserable condition and with no hope of leaving the country till some vessel arrived. [Illustration: FIJIAN HOUSE From a photograph made in 1898.] We succeeded in getting 14 pounds of salt meat, a few casks of bread and some other little articles and returned to the town. The King prepared his largest church[45] for us to live in and a small house for our provisions; gave us some cooking utensils and we made arrangements for our comfort and prepared to wait patiently until some relief came to us.