_Schooner_ ‘_Equator_,’ _at sea_, _Wednesday_, 4_th_ _December_ 1889.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—We are now about to rise, like whales, from this long
dive, and I make ready a communication which is to go to you by the first
mail from Samoa. How long we shall stay in that group I cannot forecast;
but it will be best still to address at Sydney, where I trust, when I
shall arrive, perhaps in one month from now, more probably in two or
three, to find all news.
_Business_.—Will you be likely to have a space in the Magazine for a
serial story, which should be, ready, I believe, by April, at latest by
autumn? It is called _The Wrecker_; and in book form will appear as
number 1 of South Sea Yarns by R. L. S. and Lloyd Osbourne. Here is the
table as far as fully conceived, and indeed executed. {170} . . .
The story is founded on fact, the mystery I really believe to be
insoluble; the purchase of a wreck has never been handled before, no more
has San Francisco. These seem all elements of success. There is,
besides, a character, Jim Pinkerton, of the advertising American, on whom
we build a good deal; and some sketches of the American merchant marine,
opium smuggling in Honolulu, etc. It should run to (about) three hundred
pages of my MS. I would like to know if this tale smiles upon you, if
you will have a vacancy, and what you will be willing to pay. It will of
course be copyright in both the States and England. I am a little
anxious to have it tried serially, as it tests the interest of the
mystery.
_Pleasure_.—We have had a fine time in the Gilbert group, though four
months on low islands, which involves low diet, is a largish order; and
my wife is rather down. I am myself, up to now, a pillar of health,
though our long and vile voyage of calms, squalls, cataracts of rain,
sails carried away, foretopmast lost, boats cleared and packets made on
the approach of a p. d. reef, etc., has cured me of salt brine, and
filled me with a longing for beef steak and mangoes not to be depicted.
The interest has been immense. Old King Tembinoka of Apemama, the
Napoleon of the group, poet, tyrant, altogether a man of mark, gave me
the woven corselets of his grandfather, his father and his uncle, and,
what pleased me more, told me their singular story, then all manner of
strange tales, facts and experiences for my South Sea book, which should
be a Tearer, Mr. Burlingame: no one at least has had such stuff.
We are now engaged in the hell of a dead calm, the heat is cruel—it is
the only time when I suffer from heat: I have nothing on but a pair of
serge trousers, and a singlet without sleeves of Oxford gauze—O, yes, and
a red sash about my waist; and yet as I sit here in the cabin, sweat
streams from me. The rest are on deck under a bit of awning; we are not
much above a hundred miles from port, and we might as well be in
Kamschatka. However, I should be honest: this is the first calm I have
endured without the added bane of a heavy swell, and the intoxicated
blue-bottle wallowings and knockings of the helpless ship.
I wonder how you liked the end of _The Master_; that was the hardest job
I ever had to do; did I do it?
My wife begs to be remembered to yourself and Mrs. Burlingame. Remember
all of us to all friends, particularly Low, in case I don’t get a word
through for him.—I am, yours very sincerely,