on the Pacific slope had a good deal to say
of Bully's doings. The _Daily Alta_ of San Francisco used to speak of
him as a venturesome and high-spirited American gentleman, upholding the
honour of his flag in the South Seas by disregarding the hateful tyranny
of petty British Consuls; while the San Francisco _Bulletin_ called him
a vile and brutal miscreant who should be hanged on the same gallows
with _Alabama_ Sommes and _Shenandoah_ Wardell. (Apropos of the latter
gentleman, it is interesting to remember that the Melbourne (Victoria)
Club gave a ball at which the adoring women cut off as souvenirs the
uniform buttons of the gallant pirate and his officers.) The spitfire
_Chronicle_ "claimed" that Captain William Henry Hayes was one of
Nature's gentlemen, and "was certainly not the cause of a terrible
affliction that had befallen the editor of a certain esteemed morning
contemporary." (The wife of the editor referred to had eloped with some
one.)

* * * * *

During a trading cruise in the Gambier Islands, the captain of our ship
saw some young girls whom Hayes had bought from the King of Aana (one
of the Chain Islands). They were very young, very scantily dressed,
and without doubt very beautiful. They were always chaperoned, day and
night, by two old women. One of these ancient dames named Tuna (the Eel)
told our captain that, by and by, the "big captain" would come and take
them. Tuna had quite a fund of anecdotes about Bully, whom she regarded
as immeasurably superior to any white man she had ever seen. When she
was a young and giddy girl of sixteen, she had been much admired, so
she said, by Lord John--and the officers of His Majesty's ship --------.
Bully Hayes, she believed, was Lord John's spirit returned in another
and much stronger body and better shape; and just as she had fallen in
love with the man-of-war captain, so had all the Aana girls with his
latter-day double.

* * * * *

At this time, the only white man on the island was a young American
lad of about nineteen, and Tuna, and her long-haired, dark-eyed
"boarding-school" came to his house, where they sat on an upturned
canoe and drank stone-gin (Tuna took hers neat) while teaching him to
pronounce properly the Paumotu language. Heavens! what eyes those girls
possessed! Like stars they glowed with slumbering liquid fire--the fire
of a quick-blooded and passionate race. Any one of these five island
girls, our chief mate used to say, would have utt