. I did have a stiff pull of
grog up in the village there, but I'm not drunk; but there's something
running round and round in my head that's drivin' me mad."

"Where is she?" I asked.

"God knows. I went to the mission-house and asked for the white
missionary. The ------ dog wasn't there. He and his wife are away in
Honolulu, on a dollar-cadging trip. There was about three or four of
them cursed native teachers in the house, and all I could get out of
them was that Katia wasn't there now; went away a year ago. 'Where to?'
I said to one fat pig, with a white shirt and no pants on him. 'Don't
know,' says he, in the Ponape lingo; 'she's a bad girl now, and has left
us holy ones of God and gone to the whaleships.'"

Coming from any other man but Hickson I could have laughed at this,
so truly characteristic of the repellent, canting native missionary of
Micronesia, but the quick, gasping breath of Hickson and his trembling
hand showed me how he suffered.

"I grabbed him and choked him till he was near dead, and chucked him in
a heap outside. Then I went all round to the other houses, but every
one ran away from me. I got a swig of grog from a native house and came
right back." Then he was silent, and fixed his eyes on the ship's lights
seaward.

I could not offer him any sympathy, so said nothing. Lighting our pipes
we gazed out ahead. Far away, nearest the reef, lay our brig, her riding
light just discernible. A mile or two further away were three or four
American whalers, whose black hulls we could just make out through the
darkness. Within five hundred yards of us lay a dismantled and condemned
brig, the _Kamehameha IV._ from whose stern ports came a flood of light
and the sounds of women's voices.

We were just about abeam of her when Hickson suddenly exclaimed--

"Why, sir, the boat is sinking. Pull hard, boys, pull for the brig. The
water's coming in wholesale over the gunwale. Hadn't you fellows enough
sense to leave a place to bale from?" and he slewed the boat's head for
the brig.

She had two boats astern. We were just in time to get alongside one and
pitch about two tons of yams into her, or we would have sunk.

The noise we made was heard on the brig, and a head was put out of
one of the ports, and a voice hailed us. This was the brig's owner and
captain, W------.

"Come on board and have a cigar!" he called out.

Leaving the crew to bale out and re-ship the yams, we clambered on deck.

Now, this