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Updated: May 7, 2025
"Oceanica, Asia, Africa, America, and Europe." "Perfectly so. Now we'll take Oceanica first; where are we at this moment? What are the principal divisions?" "Australia, belonging to the English; New Zealand, belonging to the English; Tasmania, belonging to the English. The islands of Chatham, Auckland, Macquarie, Kermadec, Makin, Maraki, are also belonging to the English."
Inside of an hour we dropped anchor in the port of Apia, and a friend came off and took the party on shore. The vessel's stay was five days, and then we up sails and pointed her head for Maraki, to get rid of the last passenger, the Jonah of the voyage. Before our departure Mr. Stevenson gave a dinner, where we gathered for the last time around the hospitable board.
I told them all sorts of stories to prove that sailors believed that a woman on board would bring bad luck to a ship, but all to no avail. Their idea that the passenger for Maraki was a Jonah had taken firm hold. Worse still, I began to believe it myself, and made up my mind to jump the ship as soon as I had a chance.
'Why, she said, 'if you make your appearance in a miserable craft of that kind your reputation on Maraki will be gone forever. Besides they might take you for a Jonah fresh from a whale and turn you right back to sea again. It would be safer to stay on board and make another attempt to reach Maraki, this time via Samoa. I did not think I was getting quite a square deal, but I stayed.
In spite of all efforts, however, the Equator failed to reach Maraki, being foiled by light airs and violent currents; so there was nothing left to do but to carry Paul on with us to Samoa, and though the captain tried to make him pay an increased passage he smilingly but firmly refused.
This time they took with them a passenger, a German trader named Höflich, of whom Lloyd Osbourne writes: "When Paul Höflich, then trading in Butaritari, learned that Louis had chartered the Equator for Samoa, he packed up his merchandise and with this and twenty tons of copra engaged passage for the neighboring island of Maraki, distant about sixty miles. For this passage he paid sixty dollars.
Stevenson a sewing-machine, saying he had a houseful of them, and as his arsenal was short of boat anchors he used the sewing-machines as such for his fleet. "In a few days everything was snug, and we left the moorings to beat through the passage, and from there pointed her head for Maraki.
Stevenson would emigrate to the galley-way with her couch, and, with the help of an umbrella ingeniously handled, manage to do fairly well for a night's rest. "One calm morning she called to tell us that sharks were around, and that one of them was wearing the glasses Mr. Osbourne had lost out of a boat at Maraki.
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