As the natives were a warlike race and the different tribes were constantly engaged in fighting, the dozen men who remained on shore in charge of the trading house and the curing of the beche-le-mer, went fully armed. The _Glide_, also, presented a warlike appearance. Heavy cannon loaded with cannister and grape-shot appeared at every port-hole and on deck and below weapons were placed so that they were available at an instant’s notice. In each top there was a chest of arms and ammunition and “boarding nettings, eight or ten feet wide, were triced up around the ship by tackles and shipping lines suspended from the extremities of the lower yardarms.”[1] This seemed very necessary as nearly two thousand natives were employed in gathering and curing the beche-le-mer to complete the cargoes of the _Glide_ and the _Quill_, a brig hailing from Salem, that came in not long after the _Glide_ reached Miambooa Bay. Severe storms at times prevail in the Fijis and twice the _Glide_ narrowly escaped shipwreck. On the evening of March 21, 1831, a hard gale came up unexpectedly and all night the shrill voice of the leadsman called at intervals, “She drags! She drags!” The next morning at about eleven o’clock, after having dragged her anchors for a distance of nearly eight miles, the ship drove on a shore-reef projecting from the island of Vanua Levu and soon became a total wreck. In the following pages, William Endicott, the third officer of the _Glide_, describes the events of the voyage and gives an interesting account of the natives among whom he lived for several months; supplying also a short vocabulary of their language. William Endicott, who wrote this narrative, was the son of Israel and Betsey (Rea) Endicott of Danvers, Mass., and was born there July 7, 1809. He came of a family of sailors and shipmasters and at the age of fifteen went to sea for a voyage to the west coast of South America, in the ship _China_, Capt. Hiram Putnam. There the ship was loaded with copper and the voyage home made by way of Manilla, China and Calcutta. It was during the homeward passage through the South Seas that Endicott learned of the trade in beche-le-mer. The first officer of the ship was Henry Archer, Jr., a Salem man, and on reaching home he proposed to Joseph Peabody, the great Salem shipowner and merchant, that a voyage be made to the South Seas to obtain beche-le-mer to be traded for Chinese goods. The venture promised large profits and Archer was given command of the ship _Glide_ and he shipped young Endicott as his third mate. This was Endicott’s last voyage to sea and on reaching home he engaged in the morocco leather business and in 1861 was commissioned an inspector in the Salem Custom House. He died Sept. 25, 1881, in Danvers.