Sea Bubbles," was in Apia Harbour in his schooner yacht _Albatross_, and
every day we expected to see the French Pacific Squadron steam into the
port and capture the numerous German ships then laying at anchor there.
But the gallant Admiral Clouet, who commanded, disdained such work as
this--he was willing and eager to fight any German warships that he
could come across, but had no inclination for the inglorious task of
seizing unarmed merchantmen.

For two years or so I remained in the employ of the trading firm. Hayes
then lived in Apia--or rather at Matautu, on the east side of Apia
Harbour. When I say lived there, I mean that Samoa was his headquarters,
for he was absent six months out of the twelve, cruising away in the
North West Pacific among the Caroline and Marshall Groups. His house
at Matautu Point was sweetly embowered in a grove of coco-nut and
breadfruit trees, and here the so-called pirate exercised the most
unbounded hospitality to the residents and to any captains (not Germans)
visiting Samoa. Sometimes we would meet, and whenever we did he would
urge me to come away with him on a cruise to the north-west; but duty
tied me down to my own miserable little craft, a wretched little ketch
of sixty tons register, that leaked like a basket and swarmed with
myriads of cockroaches and quite a respectable number of centipedes and
scorpions.

But it so came about that that cruise with Bully Hayes was to eventuate
after all; for one day he returned to Samoa from one of his periodical
cruises and told the owners of the aforesaid basket that he could sell
her for them to the King of Arhnu--one of the Marshall Islands--for
quite a nice sum. And the owners, being properly anxious to get rid of
such a dangerous and unprofitable craft before she fell to pieces, at
once consented.

Hayes sailed in the _Leonora_ in the month of November, and it was
agreed that I was to follow in _The Williams_ (that being the name of my
semi-floating abode of misery) in the following month, and meet him at
Milli Lagoon, in the Marshall Islands. Here we were to doctor up the
wretched little vessel as well as we possibly could, and then send her
over to the Island of Arhnu in the same group, and defraud the monarch
of that place of L1,000 by handing over the vessel to him.

Of the miseries and hardships of that voyage from Samoa to the Marshall
Islands, I shall not speak. After a passage of forty-three days we
reached Milli Lagoon, wh