laces.

For a week or so all went well, and then Hayes and Peese fell out--over
a woman, of course. Peese had bought a very beautiful girl from one of
the chiefs for 250 dollars, which sum, he told Hayes privately, he did
not intend to pay. Hayes insisted on his comrade either paying the sum
agreed on or giving her up. Peese, declaring he would do as he liked,
drew his pistol and ordered the girl into the boat. Hayes tore the
weapon from him, and seizing the girl with one hand, pointed the pistol
at Peese and told him to go on board. Peese was no coward, but he knew
his man, and sulkily retired. With all Hayes's wickedness he was not
entirely heartless. He asked the girl to tell him if she was afraid
of Peese. She said "No!" and then Bully quietly told her to follow his
fellow-captain aboard. But Peese never forgave him, and from that day
the two mutually distrusted each other.

After cruising about the Western Carolines for two or three months, and
in some mysterious way filling up the brig, now named the _Leonora_,
with a cargo of coco-nut oil, and getting a ton of hawk-bill
turtle-shell, worth 6 dollars a pound, the two worthies appeared in Apia
Harbour, Samoa. Here they sold the cargo and obtained a commission from
the firm of Johann Caesar Godeffroy and Sons, of Hamburg--a firm that
in Polynesia rivalled, in a small way, old John Company--to procure for
them two hundred or three hundred Line Island labourers at 100 dollars
per head.

In those days the most respected storekeeper in Apia was a retired
mariner--a Captain Turnbull--a stout old man, slow of speech, and
profoundly, but not obtrusively, religious. People used to wonder how
it was that "Misi Pulu," the shrewdest business man in the group, would
supply Hayes with 1,000 or 2,000 dollars' worth of trade, and merely
take his I O U, while refusing to give credit to any other soul. Spoken
to on the matter, the gruff old man replied, "That's my business, but
I'll tell you why I trust a man like Hayes and won't trust any one here.
I know the man, and I've told him what none of you would dare to tell
him, that I looked upon his course of life with horror. He laughed at
me and said, with a dreadful oath, that if ever he could do me a
'good turn' he would. That pleased me, and when he came to me a week
afterwards and said that he wanted new canvas and running gear, but the
Dutchmen wouldn't sell him any on credit, I said I would--and did, and
he paid me, and I'll