The laws of Penrhyn, some of them very comical, are stringently enforced. There is no nonsense about "remain within your houses" here, for, after nine o'clock, remain you must. Last night our cook was shut into a house where he was paying a visit, and was not allowed out until after the breakfast hour. There was also a rumour that Tin Jack, being seen after curfew, had to run, the police after him, to the house of the trader, where he remained until morning. Our sailors, to-day, somehow offended the natives and came running back to the ship pursued by a crowd. The children are much more prepossessing than their parents, some of them, especially the little girls, being quite pretty and well-behaved. It is much easier to restrain them and keep them within bounds than if they were white children in similar case. Every scrap of orange-peel thrown overboard was gathered up by them to be converted into ornaments. A bit of peel cut into the shape of a star, with a hole in the centre for the purpose, would be drawn over the buttons of their shirts and gowns, while long strings were worn hanging over the breast, or twined round the head and neck. The trader's little half-caste boy was clad in the tiniest imaginable pair of blue jeans, with a pink cotton shirt, and had little gold earrings in his ears.
_10th._--None of our party cared to go on shore. I sent a chromo representing a "domestic scene" to the trader's wife in return for her present of a coral-grown shell. The shell I afterward gave to the cook and another to the second steward, who, by this time, was almost insane with excitement and pleasure. We had a very busy day receiving shell and packing it in the wooden cases that are still being made on the forward deck. The black sailors work extraordinarily well and with perfect willingness and good nature. They make play of everything, and in spite of their small stature and slender, elegant figures, handle great weights with the utmost ease and dexterity. The little native boys work as hard as any in helping pack the shell. One little naked fellow of about ten, I was told, was deaf and dumb, but I should never have guessed it.
As soon as there was a movement on the ship the young girls came swimming out to us like a shoal of fish. The sea was dotted with the black heads over which they held their parcel of clothes in one hand to keep them dry, making their toilets on the lower rungs of the ship's ladder. One girl would stand at the foot of the ladder where she received the clothes of the newcomer; as the latter emerged dripping from the sea her garment was dexterously dropped over her head, so that she rose with the utmost decorum fully clad.