h
an expression both lively and engaging. The second, as we were still
the only figures in the landscape, it was no more than natural that
we should nod. The third, he came out fairly from his intrenchments,
praised my sketch, and with the impromptu cordiality of artists carried
me into his apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a museum of
strange objects,--paddles and battle-clubs and baskets, rough-hewn stone
images, ornaments of threaded shell, cocoanut bowls, snowy cocoanut
plumes--evidences and examples of another earth, another climate,
another race, and another (if a ruder) culture. Nor did these objects
lack a fitting commentary in the conversation of my new acquaintance.
Doubtless you have read his book. You know already how he tramped and
starved, and had so fine a profit of living, in his days among the
islands; and meeting him, as I did, one artist with another, after
months of offices and picnics, you can imagine with what charm he would
speak, and with what pleasure I would hear. It was in such talks, which
we were both eager to repeat, that I first heard the names--first fell
under the spell--of the islands; and it was from one of the first of
them that I returned (a happy man) with _Omoo_ under one arm, and my
friend's own adventures under the other.

The second incident was more dramatic, and had, besides, a bearing on
my future. I was standing, one day, near a boat-landing under Telegraph
Hill. A large barque, perhaps of eighteen hundred tons, was coming more
than usually close about the point to reach her moorings; and I was
observing her with languid inattention, when I observed two men to
stride across the bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently
dispossessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing where I
stood. In a surprisingly short time they came tearing up the steps; and
I could see that both were too well dressed to be foremast hands--the
first even with research, and both, and specially the first, appeared
under the empire of some strong emotion.

"Nearest police office!" cried the leader.

"This way," said I, immediately falling in with their precipitate pace.
"What's wrong? What ship is that?"

"That's the Gleaner," he replied. "I am chief officer, this gentleman's
third; and we've to get in our depositions before the crew. You see they
might corral us with the captain; and that's no kind of berth for me.
I've sailed with some hard cases in my time, and see