On the following day the whole lot came on board, and we left Lelé Harbour to proceed down the coast to a little harbour named Utwe, where Hayes intended to water the ship and buy fresh provisions for the voyage to Providence Island. Just before we sailed, the King and Queen--the latter a very pretty and charming little woman about five-and-twenty years of age--came on board to make some purchases from my trade-room, and I had the distinguished honour of fitting on and selling to Queen Se a yellow silk blouse and two pairs of patent leather shoes. His Majesty, who was a curious combination of piety and inborn wickedness, and spoke whaler's English with great facility, bought about 200 dollar's worth of prints and cutlery, and then proceeded to get drunk. He said that he was very glad the _Leonora_ was taking all the white men away from Kusaie, as he was afraid of their Pleasant Island retinue killing him and all his people, and taking possession of the island.
By the time Queen Se had finished and paid for her purchases her royal husband fell in a heap upon the cabin floor, and a number of twenty-dollar gold pieces, which he carried in a leather pouch at his waist, fell out and rolled all over the cabin. The Queen at once picked them up, and concealed them in the bosom of her dress, telling me with a smile that she would come on board again when we returned from Arrecifos, or as she called it, Ujilong, and spend them. Shortly afterward, her women attendants carried his Majesty up on deck, and Hayes sent him ashore in one of our boats; and then, with our decks filled with the noisy, excitable Pleasant and Ocean Islanders, and the white traders rolling about among them in a state of noisy intoxication, we got under way, and, with our yards squared, ran down the coast within a cable length of the reef.
Three days later we were driven ashore in a fierce north-westerly gale and the trim little _Leonora_ sank in Utwe Harbour in fourteen fathoms of water.
The story of the wreck of the _Leonora_ in Utwe Harbour has been told by the writer in another work, so I will now merely describe some incidents of our stay on the island. First of all, however, let me make some brief mention of the island and its people. Kusaie is about thirty-five miles in circumference and of basaltic formation, and from the coast to the lofty summit of Mount Buache, 2,200 feet high, is clothed with the richest verdure imaginable. The northern part of the island rises precipitously from the sea, and has no outlying barrier reef, but from the centre the land trends westward and southward in a graceful slope towards the beautiful shores of Coquille Harbour. The southern portion is enclosed by a chain of palm-clad coral islets, connected at low water by reefs, forming a long, deep lagoon, the waters of which teem with fish and turtle. This lagoon was used as a means of communication between the village of Utwe Harbour, where the _Leonora_ was wrecked, and the village at Coquille, and all day long one might see the red-painted canoes of the natives passing to and fro over its glassy waters, which were, from their enclosed position, seldom raffled by any wind, except daring the rainy or westerly wind season. There were but three villages of any size on the island--that at Lelé, where the King and his principal chiefs lived, Utwe or Port Lottin, and Moût or Leasee, on the shores of Coquille Harbour. At this latter place I lived most of the time during my stay on the island.