end" and anxious that you
should know the exact details of any of the celebrated stories that were
told of him. He was ludicrously angry with anyone who had told them to
the stranger incorrectly.

There was a rough cordiality about Walker which Mackintosh at first
found not unattractive, and Walker, glad to have a listener to whom all
he said was fresh, gave of his best. He was good-humoured, hearty, and
considerate. To Mackintosh, who had lived the sheltered life of a
government official in London till at the age of thirty-four an attack
of pneumonia, leaving him with the threat of tuberculosis, had forced
him to seek a post in the Pacific, Walker's existence seemed
extraordinarily romantic. The adventure with which he started on his
conquest of circumstance was typical of the man. He ran away to sea when
he was fifteen and for over a year was employed in shovelling coal on a
collier. He was an undersized boy and both men and mates were kind to
him, but the captain for some reason conceived a savage dislike of him.
He used the lad cruelly so that, beaten and kicked, he often could not
sleep for the pain that racked his limbs. He loathed the captain with
all his soul. Then he was given a tip for some race and managed to
borrow twenty-five pounds from a friend he had picked up in Belfast. He
put it on the horse, an outsider, at long odds. He had no means of
repaying the money if he lost, but it never occurred to him that he
could lose. He felt himself in luck. The horse won and he found himself
with something over a thousand pounds in hard cash. Now his chance had
come. He found out who was the best solicitor in the town--the collier
lay then somewhere on the Irish coast--went to him, and, telling him
that he heard the ship was for sale, asked him to arrange the purchase
for him. The solicitor was amused at his small client, he was only
sixteen and did not look so old, and, moved perhaps by sympathy,
promised not only to arrange the matter for him but to see that he made
a good bargain. After a little while Walker found himself the owner of
the ship. He went back to her and had what he described as the most
glorious moment of his life when he gave the skipper notice and told him
that he must get off _his_ ship in half an hour. He made the mate
captain and sailed on the collier for another nine months, at the end of
which he sold her at a profit.

He came out to the islands at the age of twenty-six as a planter. He was