CHAPTER XVI.
A call for careful navigation--Three hours' steering in twenty-three days--Arrival at the Keeling Cocos Islands--A curious chapter of social history--A welcome from the children of the islands--Cleaning and painting the _Spray_ on the beach--A Mohammedan blessing for a pot of jam--Keeling as a paradise--A risky adventure in a small boat--Away to Rodriguez--Taken for Antichrist--The governor calms the fears of the people--A lecture--A convent in the hills.
To the Keeling Cocos Islands was now only five hundred and fifty miles; but even in this short run it was necessary to be extremely careful in keeping a true course else I would miss the atoll.
On the 12th, some hundred miles southwest of Christmas Island, I saw anti-trade clouds flying up from the southwest very high over the regular winds, which weakened now for a few days, while a swell heavier than usual set in also from the southwest.

A winter gale was going on in the direction of the Cape of Good Hope.

Accordingly, I steered higher to windward, allowing twenty miles a day while this went on, for change of current; and it was not too much, for on that course I made the Keeling Islands right ahead.

The first unmistakable sign of the land was a visit one morning from a white tern that fluttered very knowingly about the vessel, and then took itself off westward with a businesslike air in its wing.

The tern is called by the islanders the "pilot of Keeling Cocos." Farther on I came among a great number of birds fishing, and fighting over whatever they caught.
My reckoning was up, and springing aloft, I saw from half-way up the mast cocoanut-trees standing out of the water ahead.