Avarua Hospital Staff, Cook Is.

Day after day, the sun rose and flamed and set upon an unbroken expanse of sea.

Every morning, Jimmy looked for the mountains of Samoa, and every night he went to sleep unsatisfied.

Their stock of coconuts dwindled to single numbers, but ever the same inhos pitable horizon ringed them round. The cutter danced on the blue waters, or hung becalmed in the trough of the waves and, while Topou lay in the shelter of the tiny half-deck, Jimmy watched the sails flap idly as the boat rolled from side to side.

They seldom spoke to one another. The spirit of romance, like the spirit of ad venture, had sunk to a mere spark, in sufficient even to sustain conversation.

On the twenty-eighth morning a green ish smear was lightly sketched along the northern skyline.

“Samoa,” said Marsters, triumphantly; and a few hours later beached the cutter on Hull Island, in the Phoenix Group.

Here, he found himself somewhat of a hero. There were feastings and junketings of one kind or another; but I prefer to pass over these quickly, because the unpal atable truth must be told. Within three days Topou had gotten herself a new lover.

Perhaps Jimmy’s presence had become in eradicably associated with coconuts. We

only know that she went in for a com plete change of diet.

The second half of this Odyssey was con ducted under the auspices of the Govern ment, who duly transported the two wan derers back to the Cook Islands by way of Samoa and New Zealand. On arrival at Rarotonga, the matter of the stolen cutter was gone into and Jimmy received a sen tence of seven months “hard,” besides being ordered to pay for the boat.

Topou? Topou married a man from the island of Manihiki and went north with him. Jimmy made no protest.

But, if you should happen to go on board the schooner “Tiare Taporo,” and enquire for the bo’sun, you will meet a mahogany-faced man with whipcord muscles, and perhaps he will tell you in the course of conversation that it is only a couple of years since he finished paying for a cutter which is still some where in the Phoenix Group.

Right Rev. Stephen Harris Davies (Bishop of Carpentaria) returned to Thursday Island from Sydney by the Merkur on June 6. He made a quick trip to Australia to visit Mrs. Davies, who has been convalescent in hospital since April last.

The hospital staff which did such excellent work during the recent hurricane in the Cook Islands Dr.

Ellison, Medical Superintendent, and Matron Butler, of the Avarua Hospital, Rarotonga, are standing in the back row. All their assistants are of Polynesian descent.