(continued from page 31) We were on the main deck. The big white ship heaved her motionless body and edged her way into the blue Pacific. We looked at our cabin. It was small, but what else can you expect? As a traveller you pay for limited space but you do see the unlimited.

AT SEA A sea voyage is not spent in a narrow cabin. First you consign some of your more cumbersome luggage to the baggage room, then you push the rest of your possessions under the bottom bunk and these you pull out as little as possible. Next you find your way to the main deck, the sun deck, or to the bar, the pool or the sun deck lounge, and the confined limitations of a tiny cabin are forgotten in the mellowness of exotic wines and exotic company. The first night was a pleasant confusion of a six-thirty dinner in a noisy excited dining room and a leisurely two hours of slow sipping of brandy in the sun-deck lounge. We sat at a greytopped table in this little lounge and sipped brandy till the harsh warnings of sea-sickness melted into oblivion. It was an intimate little room with a cream and brown patterned oval mosaic dance-floor. An Italian band was playing a mixture of Latin-American music, interpreted in an Italian way. Ah! Lovely intoxication! You are in love with everyone and the music plays on. A girl with blonde hair dances with … her husband? … her boyfriend?… Perhaps … soon find out … what a superb figure … like a Greek Goddess. “That's a typical German girl out to have a good time,” says my husband. The music softens. The room gets cosy. My clothes pinch me. No wonder! I've got my slacks on. I really ought to go and change. My eyes grow pleasantly heavy. I am in love with everyone. We go to bed. We were both sea-sick for four days.

SEA-SICKNESS The weather was rough and our bunks wouldn't lie still. What a miserable feeling it is! There you lie sound in body and in mind and soon a slight dizziness overcomes you. Your legs seem to wither with every step you take. Then you smell the diesel oil of the engines. You hold on to your stomach. You rush to the nearest basin. You go backwards and forwards, up and down, and you are lucky if you reach the basin. It was the one time when I was sick and I didn't want any sympathy in my misery. I didn't want to go anywhere. I just wanted to lie down. The cabin steward visited us too frequently. “You must get up to the main deck. You must not lie here.” He made us furious! He made it sound as though it were a weakness to succumb to seasickness. We could not have reached the main deck if we had tried. It took much energy even to reach the basin. So we lay there. I wanted to go back to New Zealand. I thought the cabin was a dirty, stinking hole. I forgot the charm of the Italian waters. I saw only the bottom of the top bunk pressing down on me. I could smell the dirty oil. I could feel the ceaseless vibration from the unsympathetic ship's engines. And I was sick again. On the fourth day at sea, we felt a little better. We dragged ourselves up to the main deck and we breathed very deeply. We looked at the still horizon. We looked down at the restless waves and slowly our feeling for life returned.

TAHITI I remember that Saturday; everyone was talking about our first port of call—Tahiti. We were due there on the Sunday morning. The air was warm and the sun caressed our skins. And as we lay there I felt that if the same sun breathed on Tahiti, then what a wonderful island it must be. You could hear snippets of gossip from excited men: “Boy! You just wait till you see Tahiti. You'll forget all about your wife. You just wait till you see Tahitian women. They're beautiful!” We met a Frenchmen who had been living in Whangarei and who was returning to Tahiti with his Tahitian-Chinese wife. He said to us, “you stay in Tahiti for a year, you stay there forever.” Such was the fever of excitement about Tahiti—its women, its climate, its love of life—that we too could not wait until the morrow dawned. Many of the men planned to go ashore by them-selves. They did not wish to be encumbered with jady friends from the boat. We slent in! People are already astir. We must have arrived, the boat is motionless. The cabin feels too warm. We struggle into our clothes. We hurry up to the deck. We breathe very deeply. Palm trees reached out and up from the shore in graceful welcome. Slow mists of steam wafted up lazily into the limitless blue of the Tahitian sky. And the sun was everywhere. It drenched itself into the green of the ground below and the blue of the mountains above and it sparkled in the waiting lagoons. And we saw the sun again in the glow of the Tahitian smiles on the wharf below and in the warmth of the honey-coloured skins. No garish signs of civilization greeted us. Before us was an island of incredible beauty. A few buildings badly needing a coat of paint interspersed themselves amongst coconut palms. Till about two miles inland the land inclined gently and then it rose to mountainous ridges of bearable height where the soft mists from the sundrenched earth hovered. ethereal cool I could smell the coconut oil—so I thought—it reminded me a little of sulphurous Rotorua. Indeed, the soft mists made the resemblance even stronger. We ate a hurried breakfast. The Italian waiter