ere we found Hayes awaiting us in the _Leonora_.
The moment our anchor had touched bottom, I packed up my traps and told
Hayes I had done with _The Williams_, and refused to go any further
in her unless she was carried on the deck of another vessel. With his
carpenter--a pig-eyed Chinaman--he made a survey of the vessel, and then
told me that she was so rotten and unseaworthy that he would not take
delivery of her. The captain, a gin-sodden little Dutchman, and the crew
were given quarters on shore at the house of Hayes's local trader, where
they were to remain till some passing ship gave them a passage back to
Samoa. The ketch was then beached, as Hayes considered that she might
eventually be patched up sufficiently to sell to the King of Arhnu, when
the _Leonora_ returned from her cruise to the islands of the North-west
Pacific, in six months' time. As I had received no salary from my
employers for nearly twelve months (and did not expect any), I consented
very cheerfully to this arrangement, and then agreed to sail with Hayes
as supercargo.

We sailed from Milli Lagoon for the Kingsmill Group a week later, and
visited nearly every island in the cluster, buying coco-nut oil and
other produce from the natives and the few scattered white traders. At
Arorai, the southernmost island of the group, we found the natives in a
state of famine owing to a long and disastrous drought. The condition
of these poor people was truly pitiable to see, and the tears came to
my eyes when I saw them, scarcely able to stand, crawling over our
bulwarks, and eagerly seizing the biscuits and dishes of boiled rice
that Hayes gave them with an unstinting hand. They begged us most
piteously to take them away somewhere--they cared not where, Samoa, Fiji
or Queensland--where they could work on the plantations and at least
get food. Five of them ate so voraciously, despite all our endeavours to
prevent it, that they died the following day. On the following morning,
Hayes called several of the head men of the island into his cabin, and
told them that if they were willing, he would take one hundred of the
people--men, women, and children--to the German trading station and
plantation at Ponape in the Caroline Islands. Here, he told them, they
would have to work for three years for 5 dollars per month each. If, at
the end of six months, they found that the Germans did not treat them
well, he would bring them back again to their own island on his
next v