ing to get one of the anchors ashore, he managed to lose his right
forefinger. I regret to say that whilst I dressed the stump and bound up
his hand for him, I could not help telling him that I was sorry it was
not his head that had been knocked off--previous to our going ashore.
'Twas very unchristianlike, but I was very sore with the man for his
pig-headedness, and then he so bewailed the loss of his finger; never
thinking of the fact that the boatswain had all but lost an eye, but had
never even murmured at his hard luck.

*****

My third experience of a "pig-headed" master mariner, followed very
quickly--so quickly, that I began to think some evil star attended my
fortunes, or rather misfortunes.

After living on the island for three months, after the loss of the
brigantine, two vessels arrived on the same day--one, a schooner
belonging to San Francisco, and bound to that port; the other, the
_George Noble_, a fine handsome barquentine, bound to Sydney. Now, it
would have suited me very well to go to California in the schooner,
but finding that the skipper of the wrecked brigantine had arranged
for passages for himself, officers and crew in her, I decided to-go to
Sydney in the _George Noble_, purely because the little man with the
missing finger had become so objectionable to me--brooding over my
losses, and wondering how I could pay my debts--that I felt I could
not possibly remain at close quarters with the man in a small schooner
without taking a thousand pounds worth of damage out of him during the
voyage, which "taking out" process might land me in a gaol with two
years imprisonment to serve. So I bade goodbye to good mate Laird, and
the boatswain with the injured eye, and the native crew who had acted so
gallantly; and then with Levi standing by my side, holding my ponderous
bag of my beloved Mexican dollars in one hand, and a few articles of
clothing in the other, I told Captain ------ that I considered him to
be an anthropoid ape, an old washerwoman, and a person who should be
generally despised and rejected by all people, even those of the dullest
intellects, such as those of the members of the firm who employed him.
And then recalling to my memory the sarcastic remark of the mate of the
_Rimitara_, to the pompous captain of the _Tuitoga_ about the command
of a canal boat, I wound up by adding that he had missed his vocation
in life, and instead of being skipper of a smart brigantine, he
was intended by