Five days out from Auckland we entered the tropics with a
temperature of 80 degrees in the water, and 85 degrees in the air,
but as the light head airs blew the intense heat of our two smoke
stacks aft, we often endured a temperature of 110 degrees. There
were quiet, heavy tropical showers, and a general misty dampness,
and the Navigator Islands, with their rainbow-tinted coral forests,
their fringe of coco palms, and groves of banyan and breadfruit
trees, these sunniest isles of the bright South Seas, resolved
themselves into dark lumps looming through a drizzling mist. But
the showers and the dampness were confined to that region, and for
the last fortnight an unclouded tropical sun has blazed upon our
crawling ship. The boiler tubes are giving way at the rate of from
ten to twenty daily, the fracture in the shaft is extending, and so,
partially maimed, the old ship drags her 320 feet of length slowly
along. The captain is continually in the engine-room, and we know
when things are looking more unpropitious than usual by his coming
up puffing his cigar with unusual strength of determination. It has
been so far a very pleasant voyage. The moral, mental, and social
qualities of my fellow-passengers are of a high order, and since the
hurricane we have been rather like a family circle than a
miscellaneous accidental group.
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