A pleasant expedition was planned for the next day.  Our visit being principally for wooding and watering, both of which it was necessary for us to do ourselves, Captain Count showed his usual promptitude in commencing at once.  Permission having been obtained and, I suppose, paid for, we set out with two boats and a plentiful supply of axes for a well-wooded promontory to prepare a store of wood.  Wood chopping is not usually looked upon as a sailor’s pastime; but we had had considerable experience during the voyage, as a result of which most of us could swing an axe in fine style.  But the Kanakas beat us all hollow.  Delighted to get ashore again, pleased with the fine axes as children with new toys, they laid about them in grand style, the young trees falling right and left in scores.  Anybody would have judged that we were working piece-work, at so much a cord, the pile grew so fast.  There was such a quantity collected that, instead of lightering it off in the boats, which is very rough and dirty usage for them, I constructed a sort of raft with four large spars arranged in the form of an oblong, placing an immense quantity of the smaller stuff in between.  Upright sticks were rudely lashed here and there, to keep the pile from bobbing out underneath, and thus loaded we proceeded slowly to the ship with sufficient wood for our wants brought in one journey.  It was immediately hoisted on board, sawn into convenient lengths, and stowed away, the whole operation being completed, of getting between eight and ten tons of firewood cut, ferried, and stowed, in less than eight hours.

Next day was devoted to watering; but as I have elsewhere described that necessary if prosaic occupation, I will not repeat the story.  Sufficient to say that the job was successfully “did” in the course of the day.

All the work being accomplished for which we had come, it only remained to give the crew “liberty.”  So the port watch, in their best (?) rig, were mustered aft; each man received ten shillings, and away they went in glee for the first genuine day’s liberty since leaving Honolulu.  For although they had been much ashore in Vau Vau, that was not looked upon in the same light as a day’s freedom in a town where liquor might be procured, and the questionable privilege of getting drunk taken advantage of.  Envious eyes watched their progress from the other ships, but, much to my secret satisfaction, none of their crews were allowed ashore at the same time.  There were quite sufficient possibilities of a row among our own crowd, without farther complications such as would almost certainly have occurred had the strangers been let loose at the same time.  Unfortunately, to the ordinary sailor-man, the place presented no other forms of amusement besides drinking, and I was grieved to see almost the whole crowd, including the Kanakas, emerge from the grog-shop plentifully supplied with bottles, and, seating themselves on the beach,