life and soul. All went
pleasantly until Mr Pease--a degenerate sort of pirate who made his
living by half bullying, half swindling lonely white men on small
islands out of their coconut oil, and unarmed merchantmen out of their
stores--came to Apia in an armed ship with a Malay crew. From that
moment Hayes' life became less idyllic. Hayes and Pease conceived a
most violent hatred of each other, and poor old Mr Williams was really
worried into an attack of elephantiasis (which answers to the gout in
those latitudes) by his continual efforts to prevent the two
desperadoes from flying at each other's throat. Heartily glad was he
when Pease--who was the sort of man that always observed LES
CONVENANCES when possible, and who fired a salute of twenty-one guns on
the Queen's Birthday--came one afternoon to get his papers "all
regular," and clear for sea. But lo! the next morning, when his vessel
had disappeared, it was found that his enemy Captain Hayes had
disappeared also, and the ladies of Samoa were left disconsolate at the
departure of the most agreeable man they had ever known.

However, all this is another story, as Mr Kipling says, and one which I
hope Mr Becke will tell us more fully some day, for he knew Hayes well,
having acted as supercargo on board his ship, and shared a shipwreck
and other adventures with him.

But even before this date Mr Becke had had as much experience as falls
to most men of adventures in the Pacific Ocean.

Born at Port Macquarrie in Australia, where his father was clerk of
petty sessions, he was seized at the age of fourteen with an intense
longing to go to sea. It is possible that he inherited this passion
through his mother, for her father, Charles Beilby, who was private
secretary to the Duke of Cumberland, invested a legacy that fell to him
in a small vessel, and sailed with his family to the then very new
world of Australia. However this may be, it was impossible to keep
Louis Becke at home; and, as an alternative, a uncle undertook to send
him, and a brother two years older, to a mercantile house in
California. His first voyage was a terrible one. There were no
steamers, of course, in those days, and they sailed for San Francisco
in a wretched old barque. For over a month they were drifting about the
stormy sea between Australia and New Zealand, a partially dismasted and
leaking wreck. The crew mutinied--they had bitter cause to--and only
after calling at Rurutu, in the Tubuai Gr