a collection of tales entitled _By Reef and Palm_. It was
a poor sort of an affair, but filled my boyish heart with a glorious
delight--in fact it was an enjoyable mutiny in some respects, for what
might have been a tragedy was turned into a comedy.

With a brother two years older I was sent to San Francisco by our
parents to begin life in a commercial house, and subsequently (of
course) make our fortunes.

Our passages were taken at Newcastle (New South Wales) on the barque
_Lizzie and Rosa_, commanded by a little red-headed Irishman, to whose
care we were committed. His wife (who sailed with him) was a most
lovable woman, generous to a fault. _He_ was about the meanest specimen
of an Irishman that ever was born, was a savage little bully, boasted of
being a Fenian, and his insignificant appearance on his quarter deck, as
he strutted up and down, irresistibly suggested a monkey on a stick, and
my brother and myself took a quick dislike to him, as also did the other
passengers, of whom there were thirty--cabin and steerage. His wife (who
was the daughter of a distinguished Irish prelate) was actually afraid
of the little man, who snarled and snapped at her as if she were a
disobedient child. (Both of them are long since dead, so I can write
freely of their characteristics.)

The barque had formerly been a French corvette--the _Felix Bernaboo_.
She was old, ill-found and leaky, and from the day we left Newcastle the
pumps were kept going, and a week later the crew came aft and demanded
that the ship should return to port.

The little man succeeded in quieting them for the time by giving them
better food, and we continued on our course, meeting with such a series
of adverse gales that it was forty-one days before we sighted the island
of Rurutu in the South Pacific. By this time the crew and steerage
passengers were in a very angry frame of mind; the former were
overworked and exhausted, and the latter were furious at the miserly
allowance of food doled out to them by the equally miserly captain.

At Rurutu the natives brought off two boat-loads of fresh provisions,
but the captain bought only one small pig for the cabin passengers. The
steerage passengers bought up everything else, and in a few minutes
the crew came aft and asked the captain to buy them some decent food in
place of the decayed pork and weevily biscuit upon which they had been
existing. He refused, and ordered them for'ard, and then the mate, a
hot-t