t was a title that came to him freighted with affection, and honor, and
appreciation of his unpretending merit. And in testimony of the
genuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flag
should be devised for him and used solely to welcome his coming and wave
him God-speed in his going. From that time forth, whenever his ship was
signaled in the offing, or he catted his anchor and stood out to sea,
that ensign streamed from the royal halliards on the parliament house and
the nation lifted their hats to it with spontaneous accord.

Yet he had never fired a gun or fought a battle in his life. When I knew
him on board the Ajax, he was seventy-two years old and had plowed the
salt water sixty-one of them. For sixteen years he had gone in and out
of the harbor of Honolulu in command of a whaleship, and for sixteen more
had been captain of a San Francisco and Sandwich Island passenger packet
and had never had an accident or lost a vessel. The simple natives knew
him for a friend who never failed them, and regarded him as children
regard a father. It was a dangerous thing to oppress them when the
roaring Admiral was around.

Two years before I knew the Admiral, he had retired from the sea on a
competence, and had sworn a colossal nine-jointed oath that he would
"never go within smelling distance of the salt water again as long as he
lived." And he had conscientiously kept it. That is to say, he
considered he had kept it, and it would have been more than dangerous to
suggest to him, even in the gentlest way, that making eleven long sea
voyages, as a passenger, during the two years that had transpired since
he "retired," was only keeping the general spirit of it and not the
strict letter.

The Admiral knew only one narrow line of conduct to pursue in any and all
cases where there was a fight, and that was to shoulder his way straight
in without an inquiry as to the rights or the merits of it, and take the
part of the weaker side.--And this was the reason why he was always sure
to be present at the trial of any universally execrated criminal to
oppress and intimidate the jury with a vindictive pantomime of what he
would do to them if he ever caught them out of the box. And this was why
harried cats and outlawed dogs that knew him confidently took sanctuary
under his chair in time of trouble. In the beginning he was the most
frantic and bloodthirsty Union man that drew breath in the shadow of the