ime the name of the late captain had been mentioned,
and Herrick grasped the occasion. The reader shall be spared Uncle Ned's
unwieldy dialect, and learn in less embarrassing English the sum of what
he now communicated. The ship had scarce cleared the Golden Gates before
the captain and mate had entered on a career of drunkenness, which was
scarcely interrupted by their malady and only closed by death. For days
and weeks they had encountered neither land nor ship; and seeing
themselves lost on the huge deep with their insane conductors, the
natives had drunk deep of terror.

At length they made a low island and went in; and Wiseman and Wishart
landed in the boat.

There was a great village, a very fine village, and plenty Kanakas in
that place; but all mighty serious; and from every here and there in the
back parts of the settlement, Taveeta heard the sounds of island
lamentation. "I no savvy _talk_ that island," said he. "I savvy hear um
_cly_. I think, Hum! too many people die here!" But upon Wiseman and
Wishart the significance of that barbaric keening was lost. Full of
bread and drink, they rollicked along unconcerned, embraced the girls,
who had scarce energy to repel them, took up and joined (with drunken
voices) in the death-wail, and at last (on what they took to be an
invitation) entered under the roof of a house in which was a
considerable concourse of people sitting silent. They stooped below the
eaves, flushed and laughing; within a minute they came forth again with
changed faces and silent tongues; and as the press severed to make way
for them, Taveeta was able to perceive, in the deep shadow of the house,
the sick man raising from his mat a head already defeatured by disease.
The two tragic triflers fled without hesitation for their boat,
screaming on Taveeta to make haste; they came aboard with all speed of
oars, raised anchor and crowded sail upon the ship with blows and
curses, and were at sea again--and again drunk--before sunset. A week
after, and the last of the two had been committed to the deep. Herrick
asked Taveeta where that island was, and he replied that, by what he
gathered of folks' talk as they went up together from the beach, he
supposed it must be one of the Paumotus. This was in itself probable
enough, for the Dangerous Archipelago had been swept that year from east
to west by devastating small-pox; but Herrick thought it a strange
course to lie from Sydney. Then he remembered the drink