der pretence of
giving Fan some medicine for an imaginary cough, drew out of the battle
and went away, a vanquished man. Then cheers and laughter went up, and
Williams, the ship's benefactor was a hero. The news went about the
vessel, champagne was ordered, and enthusiastic reception instituted in
the smoking room, and everybody flocked thither to shake hands with the
conqueror. The wheelman said afterward, that the Admiral stood up behind
the pilot house and "ripped and cursed all to himself" till he loosened
the smokestack guys and becalmed the mainsail.

The Admiral's power was broken. After that, if he began argument,
somebody would bring Williams, and the old man would grow weak and begin
to quiet down at once. And as soon as he was done, Williams in his
dulcet, insinuating way, would invent some history (referring for proof,
to the old man's own excellent memory and to copies of "The Old Guard"
known not to be in his possession) that would turn the tables completely
and leave the Admiral all abroad and helpless. By and by he came to so
dread Williams and his gilded tongue that he would stop talking when he
saw him approach, and finally ceased to mention politics altogether, and
from that time forward there was entire peace and serenity in the ship.

CHAPTER LXIII.

On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on the
lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look. After two
thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one. As we
approached, the imposing promontory of Diamond Head rose up out of the
ocean its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently the
details of the land began to make themselves manifest: first the line of
beach; then the plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of the
natives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between twelve
and fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level; with streets
from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them
straight as a line and few as crooked as a corkscrew.

The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it.
Every step revealed a new contrast--disclosed something I was
unaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts of
San Francisco, I saw dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-colored
pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid in
cement; also a great number of neat wh