The calmer the sea, the more the barnacles grow.  In the tropical Pacific, but a few weeks suffice thus to encase your craft in shell armor.  Vast bunches adhere to the very cutwater, and if not stricken off, much impede the ship’s sailing.  And, at intervals, this clearing away of barnacles was one of Annatoo’s occupations.  For be it known, that, like most termagants, the dame was tidy at times, though capriciously; loving cleanliness by fits and starts.  Wherefore, these barnacles oftentimes troubled her; and with a long pole she would go about, brushing them aside.  It beguiled the weary hours, if nothing more; and then she would return to her beads and her trinkets; telling them all over again; murmuring forth her devotions, and marking whether Samoa had been pilfering from her store.

Now, the escape from the shoal did much once again to heal the differences of the good lady and her spouse.  And keeping house, as they did, all alone by themselves, in that lonely craft, a marvel it is, that they should ever have quarreled.  And then to divorce, and yet dwell in the same tenement, was only aggravating the evil.  So Belisarius and Antonina again came together.  But now, grown wise by experience, they neither loved over-keenly, nor hated; but took things as they were; found themselves joined, without hope of a sundering, and did what they could to make a match of the mate.  Annatoo concluded that Samoa was not wholly to be enslaved; and Samoa thought best to wink at Annatoo’s foibles, and let her purloin when she pleased.

But as in many cases, all this philosophy about wedlock is not proof against the perpetual contact of the parties concerned; and as it is far better to revive the old days of courtship, when men’s mouths are honey-combs:  and, to make them still sweeter, the ladies the bees which there store their sweets; when fathomless raptures glimmer far down in the lover’s fond eye; and best of all, when visits are alternated by absence:  so, like my dignified lord duke and his duchess, Samoa and Annatoo, man and wife, dwelling in the same house, still kept up their separate quarters.  Marlborough visiting Sarah; and Sarah, Marlborough, whenever the humor suggested.

CHAPTER XXVII In Which The Past History Op The Parki Is Concluded

Still days, days, days sped by; and steering now this way, now that, to avoid the green treacherous shores, which frequently rose into view, the Parki went to and fro in the sea; till at last, it seemed hard to tell, in what watery world she floated.  Well knowing the risks they ran, Samoa desponded.  But blessed be ignorance.  For in the day of his despondency, the lively old lass his wife bade him be of stout heart, cheer up, and steer away manfully for the setting sun; following which, they must inevitably arrive at her own dear native island, where all their cares would be over.  So squaring their yards, away they glided; far sloping down the liquid sphere.