Every inch of that island (seven miles long, a mile or so broad) is familiar now; but it is almost ludicrous to recollect with what anxiety we pored over the hydrographic charts and sailing instructions of the various nations, to find some information, however scanty, about the spot which was to be our home for nearly a month.  All that was known was that this island had formerly been occupied as a guano station.  There was a landing then.

After the personnel of the party had been decided on, there were the preparations for its subsistence to be looked out for.  How to feed seventeen men for twenty-one days?  Fortunately the provisions that we took, and the fresh fish caught for us by the natives, just sufficed to carry us through with comfort and with health.

In March of 1883 we sailed from New York, and about the same time a French expedition left Europe bound for the same spot.  From New York to Panama, from Panama to Lima, were our first steps.  Here we joined the United States steamship Hartford, Admiral Farragut’s flagship, and the next day set sail for our destined port,—­if a coral reef surrounded by a raging surf can be called a port.  About the same time a party of French observers under Monsieur Janssen, of the Paris Academy of Sciences, left Panama in the Eclaireur.

[Illustration:  BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE CAROLINE ISLANDS.]

It was an ocean race of four thousand miles due west.  The station Caroline Islands was supposed to be more desirable than Flint Island.  Admiral Wilkes’s expedition had lain off the latter several days without being able to land on account of the tremendous surf, so that it was eminently desirable to “beat the Frenchman,” as the sailors put it.  With this end in view our party had secured (through a member of the National Academy in Washington) the verbal promise of the proper official of the Navy Department that the Hartford’s orders should read “to burn coal as necessary.”  The last obstacle to success was thus removed.  We were all prepared, and now the ship would take us speedily to our station.

Imagine our feelings the next day after leaving Callao, when the commanding officer of the Hartford opened his sealed orders.  They read (dated Washington, in February), “To arrive at Caroline Islands (in April) with full coal-bunkers!”

Officialism could go no further.  Here was an expedition sent on a slow-sailing ship directly through the regions of calms for four thousand miles.  It was of no possible use to send the expedition at all unless it arrived in time.  And here were our orders “to arrive with full coal-bunkers.”

Fortunately we had unheard-of good-luck.  The trade-wind blew for us as it did for the Ancient Mariner, and we sped along the parallel of 12 deg. south at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles a day under sail, while the Eclaireur was steaming for thirty days a little nearer the equator in a dead calm.  We arrived off the island just in time, with not a day to spare.  It was a narrow escape, and a warning to all of us never to sail again under sealed orders unless we knew what was under the seal.