Monday, Jan. 16.
The morning was rather muggy and it rained heavily at times. We got all our gear on the schooner and proceeded on board at 12,30 p.m. There was no delay and the crew was afl ready, with anchor up, so started lof in tow of motor launch. It would Ihave taken hours to beat out of the harbour; as it was, it took until 4.30 get outside when, as we were going west about, we had a fair wind, Jand soon got round to the west side lof the island. It turned out to be a glorious night. X. would not go to bed—the stars wore so brilliant and wwe had a fine view of the phenomenon of seeing four planets all close together alniost in a vertical line, [They were Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Mercury. Also, later, we saw the Southern Cross' rise, "and Centauri and Pointers. At midnight, wind fell light, so they told me—I was sound asleep. We had the motor munch in tow as we could not hoist her up.. The schooner is called Perlita. The crew have no proper quarters; they prefer to steep on Jdeck. There was one shelter cabin aft, very small, so we also slept on Jdock in our cots. Later, I slept funder the shelter, as it' was too Jdraughty under the sails. X. was 2 veteran and he did not mind at all.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.