June 12.  Stiff breeze, and we are fairly flying—­dead ahead of it —­and toward the islands.  Good hope, but the prospects of hunger are awful.  Ate ham-bone to-day.  It is the captain’s birthday; he is fifty-four years old.

June 13.  The ham-rags are not quite all gone yet, and the boot-legs, we find, are very palatable after we get the salt out of them.  A little smoke, I think, does some little good; but I don’t know.

June 14.  Hunger does not pain us much, but we are dreadfully weak.  Our water is getting frightfully low.  God grant we may see land soon!  Nothing to eat, but feel better than I did yesterday.  Toward evening saw a magnificent rainbow—­the first we had seen.  Captain said, ‘Cheer up, boys; it’s a prophecy—­it’s the bow of promise!’

June 15.  God be for ever praised for His infinite mercy!  Land in sight! rapidly neared it and soon were sure of it ....  Two noble Kanakas swam out and took the boat ashore.  We were joyfully received by two white men—­Mr. Jones and his steward Charley—­and a crowd of native men, women, and children.  They treated us splendidly—­aided us, and carried us up the bank, and brought us water, poi, bananas, and green coconuts; but the white men took care of us and prevented those who would have eaten too much from doing so.  Everybody overjoyed to see us, and all sympathy expressed in faces, deeds, and words.  We were then helped up to the house; and help we needed.  Mr. Jones and Charley are the only white men here.  Treated us splendidly.  Gave us first about a teaspoonful of spirits in water, and then to each a cup of warm tea, with a little bread.  Takes every care of us.  Gave us later another cup of tea, and bread the same, and then let us go to rest.  It is the happiest day of my life....  God in His mercy has heard our prayer....  Everybody is so kind.  Words cannot tell.

June 16.  Mr. Jones gave us a delightful bed, and we surely had a good night’s rest; but not sleep—­we were too happy to sleep; would keep the reality and not let it turn to a delusion—­dreaded that we might wake up and find ourselves in the boat again.

It is an amazing adventure.  There is nothing of its sort in history that surpasses it in impossibilities made possible.  In one extraordinary detail—­the survival of every person in the boat—­it probably stands alone in the history of adventures of its kinds.  Usually merely a part of a boat’s company survive—­officers, mainly, and other educated and tenderly-reared men, unused to hardship and heavy labour; the untrained, roughly-reared hard workers succumb.  But in this case even the rudest and roughest stood the privations and miseries of the