hat he
pleased, and as for the light (which was Kalamake's lantern) he vowed he
had seen none.

This ship was a schooner bound for Honolulu and then to trade in the low
islands; and by a very good chance for Keola she had lost a man off the
bowsprit in a squall. It was no use talking. Keola durst not stay in the
Eight Islands. Word goes so quickly, and all men are so fond to talk and
carry news, that if he hid in the north end of Kauai or in the south end
of Kaue, the wizard would have wind of it before a month, and he must
perish. So he did what seemed the most prudent, and shipped sailor in
the place of the man who had been drowned.

In some ways the ship was a good place. The food was extraordinarily
rich and plenty, with biscuits and salt beef every day, and pea-soup and
puddings made of flour and suet twice a week, so that Keola grew fat.
The captain also was a good man, and the crew no worse than other
whites. The trouble was the mate, who was the most difficult man to
please Keola had ever met with, and beat and cursed him daily, both for
what he did and what he did not. The blows that he dealt were very sore,
for he was strong; and the words he used were very unpalatable, for
Keola was come of a good family and accustomed to respect. And what was
the worst of all, whenever Keola found a chance to sleep, there was the
mate awake and stirring him up with a rope's end. Keola saw it would
never do; and he made up his mind to run away.

They were about a month out from Honolulu when they made the land. It
was a fine starry night, the sea was smooth as well as the sky fair; it
blew a steady trade; and there was the island on their weather bow, a
ribbon of palm-trees lying flat along the sea. The captain and the mate
looked at it with the night-glass, and named the name of it, and talked
of it, beside the wheel where Keola was steering. It seemed it was an
isle where no traders came. By the captain's way, it was an isle besides
where no man dwelt; but the mate thought otherwise.

"I don't give a cent for the directory," said he. "I've been past here
one night in the schooner _Eugenie_; it was just such a night as this;
they were fishing with torches, and the beach was thick with lights like
a town."

"Well, well," says the captain, "it's steep-to, that's the great point;
and there ain't any outlying dangers by the chart, so we'll just hug the
lee side of it.--Keep her romping full, don't I tell you!" he cried to