the welling of a great
resolution, of a great revolt. He would reform. He would save his money.
He would live straight. When they were paid off at Portland there should
be two hundred dollars coming to him--two hundred dollars, more or less.
He would put it in the bank, and get a shakedown in one of them model
lodging houses. He would turn in at night with "Jesus, lover of my soul"
in worsted work above his blessed head, and in the morning he would
plank down his fifteen cents and begin the day with gospel tea. He would
be a man! Yes, sirree, a man! Not a hog!

Then in his mind's eye he saw himself rolling down the street, a girl on
either arm, the gaslights dancing in his tipsy head. He would meet a
shipmate and drop in somewhere for a drink; another shipmate and another
drink; and then, the party growing as it went, a general adjournment to
one of them hurdy-gurdies. Here they would dance and drink and sing and
whoop it up like hell, till--till--Yes, that's what would happen. That's
what always happened. Them good resolutions always ended that way--in
smoke. He had made them, man and boy, these fourteen years. He would
make them, he supposed, until the day he died. And keep them? No; he was
a hog; he would go on like a hog; he would die a hog--a durned, low,
dirty, contemptible hog!

He spat in the water to emphasize his self-disgust, cursed the infernal
sun, and then, dipping into the pot again, continued his job.

Turning round to rest his arms, he perceived, beneath the deep shade of
the Matautu shore, the first sign of animation in that sleepy
settlement. A crowd of natives were straggling out to a whaleboat that
was apparently being made ready for sea. Men and girls were wading to
it, with baskets of food, kegs of beef, a tin of biscuit, and a
capacious chest. A couple of children bailed frantically in the stern
sheets, while a shrill old woman slid over the gunwale with a live pig
in her arms. Strange packages of _tapa_ cloth were carried out; bundles
of mats, paddles, guns, a tin of kerosene, a huge stone for an anchor,
a water demijohn, more pigs, a baby, and a parrakeet in a bamboo cage.
These were all thrown in, and stored with noisy good-humor and a dozen
different readjustments. The baby, in turn, was given the bow, the
stern, the center, as though nothing would satisfy it. A pig broke loose
and was hilariously recaptured. A dejected, thin person, somewhat past
middle years, in what seemed no costume bu