ing him like he was a favorite dog who she was proud to show off
being master of. She sent him her canary, which was all she had in the
world except her clothes, and wrote a little piece how it would sing to
him at sea and soothe his rugged bosom.

This wasn't all he got neither, for she was a great one with her needle,
and did texts better nor a Sailors' Home. Coe's cabin was more like a
little Bethel than the inside of a trading ship, for there was six of
them, and a red worsted dog extra, playing with a blue worsted ball, and
"Jesus, Lover of my Soul" and "Where is my Wandering Boy To-night?" The
biggest joke of all was in the trade room, where there was "Honesty is
the Best Policy," and "God Sees You"; and the boys guyed Coe about it
unmerciful till he laid out Tom Dawlish with a fancy lamp, and said a
gentleman ought to know where to stop. He was an awful thin-skinned kind
of Christian when it came to any remarks being passed on Mrs. Tweedie,
and Tom has a scar there to this day, though Coe made it up to him
afterwards with a melodian worth nine dollars.

But Coe wasn't the only dog around the Mission house. Mrs. Tweedie
started up another, a scamp of a chief named Afiola. In every community
there's some fellar who's at the root of all the mischief that happens,
so that if anybody gets speared of a dark night, or a girl is missing
from home, you know just where to look for who done it. In Puna Punou
you looked for Afiola, and the chances were you'd find him drunk on
orange beer and laying for trouble with a gun. Oh, yes, indeed, there
was two to his credit, to my certain knowledge, murders both, and I'll
bet a ton of shell to an old hat besides that he had a hand in taking
off the Chinaman at Oa Bay. A regular bad lot, and, like every big
scalawag, every little scalawag had to tail along with him, too, for
company and mutual protection; so his houses was the kind of Bowery of
Puna Punou, with the whalers going to him to buy girls, and all that.

There were higher chiefs than Afiola in the settlement--five or six of
them, at least, not to speak of the king--but none of them seemed able
to do a thing to stop him. They were all a slack lot at any time, and
thought excommunicating him enough, and taking away his communion
ticket. I guess he had been out of the church for a matter of six years,
and, as I said before, he was the scandal of the place and a terror.
They were all dead scared of him, that was the truth, and