The dinner itself really deserves a detailed description, if only to show that one may make the tour of Tahiti without necessarily having to rough it in the matter of food.  We had crayfish and salad as a preliminary, and next, an excellent soup followed by delicious little oysters, that cling to the boughs and roots of the guava and mangrove trees overhanging the sea.  Then came a large fish, name unknown, the inevitable bouilli and cabbage, cotelettes aux pommes, biftek aux champignons, succeeded by crabs and other shellfish, including wurrali, a delicate-flavoured kind of lobster, an omelette aux abricots, and dessert of tropical fruits.  We were also supplied with good wine, both red and white, and bottled beer.

I ought, in truth, to add that the cockroaches were rather lively and plentiful, but they did not form a serious drawback to our enjoyment.  After dinner, however, when I went to see Mabelle to bed, hundreds of these creatures, about three inches long, and broad in proportion, scuttled away as I lighted the candle; and while we were sitting outside we could see troops of them marching up and down in rows between the crevices of the walls.  Then there were the mosquitoes, who hummed and buzzed about us, and with whom, alas! we were doomed to make a closer acquaintance.  Our bed was fitted with the very thickest calico mosquito curtains, impervious to the air, but not to the venomous little insects, who found their way in through every tiny opening in spite of all our efforts to exclude them.

Tuesday, December 5th.—­The heat in the night was suffocating, and soon after twelve o’clock we both woke up, feeling half-stifled.  There was a dim light shining into the room, and Tom said, ’Thank goodness, it’s getting daylight;’ but on striking my repeater we found to our regret that this was a mistake.  In the moonlight I could see columns of nasty brown cockroaches ascending the bedposts, crawling along the top of the curtains, dropping with a thud on to the bed, and then descending over the side to the ground.  At last I could stand it no longer, and opening the curtains cautiously, I seized my slippers, knocked half-a-dozen brown beasts out of each, wrapped myself in a poncho—­previously well shaken—­gathered my garments around me, surmounted a barricade I had constructed overnight to keep the pigs and chickens out of our doorless room, and fled to the garden.  All was still, the only sign of life being a light in a neighbouring hut, and I sat out in the open air in comparative comfort, until driven indoors again by torrents of rain, at about half-past two o’clock.

I plunged into bed again, taking several mosquitoes with me, which hummed and buzzed and devoured us to their hearts’ content till dawn.  Then I got up and walked down to the beach to bathe, and returned to breakfast at six o’clock, refreshed but still disfigured.

It is now the depth of winter and the middle of the rainy season in Tahiti; but, luckily for us, it is nearly always fine in the daytime.  At night, however, there is often a perfect deluge, which floods the houses and gardens, turns the streams into torrents, but washes and refreshes the vegetation, and leaves the landscape brighter and greener than before.