Crossword-Solution: NICOLL 6 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 8

Those that I did in the _Janet Nicoll_, under the most ungodly circumstances, I fear will want a lot of suppling and lightening, but I hope to have your remarks in a month or two upon that point.

CHAPTER V [_On Board Ship between Sydney and Apia_, _Feb._ 1891.] MY DEAR COLVIN,—The _Janet Nicoll_ stuff was rather worse than I had looked for; you have picked out all that is fit to stand, bar two others (which I don’t dislike)—the Port of Entry and the House of Temoana; that is for a present opinion; I may condemn these also ere I have done.

And where my mail is to come in, God knows! This forced, violent, alembicated style is most abhorrent to me; it can’t be helped; the note was struck years ago on the _Janet Nicoll_, and has to be maintained somehow; and I can only hope the intrinsic horror and pathos, and a kind of fierce glow of colour there is to it, and the surely remarkable wealth of striking incident, may guide our little shallop into port.

Benjamin Hird was amazed to find the lads playing cricket on the beach and talking English; and it was in English that the crew of the _Janet Nicoll_, a set of black boys from different Melanesian islands, communicated with other natives throughout the cruise, transmitted orders, and sometimes jested together on the fore-hatch.

FAIRCHILD,—I began a letter to you on board the _Janet Nicoll_ on my last cruise, wrote, I believe, two sheets, and ruthlessly destroyed the flippant trash.