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Updated: May 7, 2025
"He landed me here five months ago. The people knew me at once, and made me very welcome. I told them that I did not know if my husband were alive or dead, but had come here to wait. The affection they cherished for old Gurden was very strongly shown when I told them of his death, and I am now living with the relatives of the woman he married here so many years ago.
"He wished Gurden to remain until we returned, but the old man said it would be too lonely for him, but that if we took him back to Strong's Island he would be content to await our return there. The long voyage to Honolulu, he thought, would be too much for him, and beside that he wished to return to Strong's Island, if only to say farewell to its people with whom he had lived for so many years.
Now that big island, so Gurden told you, is much higher than any of the rest; it has not only plenty of coconuts, but groves of breadfruit as well, and there are several native wells there. If we remained here, I am afraid that our men would be continually grumbling.
This advice my husband decided to follow. He also meant to buy some diving suits and pumping gear, for Gurden had said that he believed the best shell in the lagoon was to be obtained at a depth of eighteen fathoms too deep for the ordinary native method of diving.
From the very first Gurden became weaker, and on the fourth or fifth day out he told us that he did not believe he would live through the night. We tried to cheer him up, but he only shook his head, and requested us to commit to paper the exact bearings of the patches of the pearl-shell beds on the lagoon he was doomed never to see again.
Arrecifos, he knew, did not belong to any nation, and both he and old Gurden thought that the British Consul at Honolulu would give us what is, I think, called a 'letter of protection, whereby a British subject hoisting the English flag upon one of the Pacific Islands can, with the approval of a naval officer, and the concurrence of the native inhabitants, purchase it, and get protection from the English Government.
Tracey was to stand in with us, too old Gurden and myself were each to give him one-tenth. "Taking the old man on board the poor old fellow was not only in feeble health, but was childishly anxious to, as he said, 'smell the smell of a big town again' we left Strong's Island for Sydney.
"This is one of the patches mentioned by Gurden," said Barry, after carefully taking bearings, and studying a rough plan of the lagoon which had been given him by Rawlings; "let us try here first. Billy Onotoa, and you, Tom Arorai, go down and see."
During the seven years we spent among these islands I would often accompany him, for it was very lonely on Jaluit only natives to talk to and he would sometimes be away many months at a time. "On our last voyage in the cutter we called in at Port Lêle on Strong's Island. Old Gurden, the trader there, and my husband had had business dealings with each other for many years.
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