The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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independence against an invading power.

Tahiti, one of the group of Society Islands, was their next stopping
place. Before starting a new mate was shipped, who was more familiar
with the course, which lay through the Dangerous Archipelago--a group of
low, badly lighted islands.

The Society Islands are most beautiful, Tahiti probably the gem of them
all, but on arriving Stevenson was in no condition to appreciate their
loveliness. A cold contracted on the trip made him quite ill. The trip
had proved very dangerous even with the aid of a pilot, and twice they
gave themselves up for lost when they were becalmed and drifted in
toward the shore. "The reefs were close in," wrote Stevenson, "with my
eye! What a surf! The pilot thought we were gone and the captain had a
boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue."

After landing his condition became so much worse his wife grew desperate