re cat concert, and in
the morning there lay the two offenders, stone dead. It was marvelous
to me. It still is marvelous. First, it was starlight, and Saxtorph shot
without drawing a bead; next, he shot so rapidly that the two reports
were like a double report; and finally, he knew he had hit his marks
without looking to see.

"Two days afterward he came on board to see me. I was mate, then, on
the Duchess, a whacking big one-hundred-and fifty-ton schooner, a
blackbirder. And let me tell you that blackbirders were blackbirders in
those days. There weren't any government protection for US, either. It
was rough work, give and take, if we were finished, and nothing said,
and we ran niggers from every south sea island they didn't kick us off
from. Well, Saxtorph came on board, John Saxtorph was the name he gave.
He was a sandy little man, hair sandy, complexion sandy, and eyes sandy,
too. Nothing striking about him. His soul was as neutral as his color
scheme. He said he was strapped and wanted to ship on board. Would go
cabin boy, cook, supercargo, or common sailor. Didn't know anything
about any of the billets, but said that he was willing to learn. I
didn't want him, but his shooting had so impressed me that I took him as
common sailor, wages three pounds per month.

"He was willing to learn all right, I'll say that much. But he was
constitutionally unable to learn anything. He could no more box the
compass than I could mix drinks like Roberts here. And as for steering,
he gave me my first gray hairs. I never dared risk him at the wheel when
we were running in a big sea, while full-and-by and close-and-by were
insoluble mysteries. Couldn't ever tell the difference between a sheet
and a tackle, simply couldn't. The fore-throat-jig and the jib-jig were
all one to him. Tell him to slack off the mainsheet, and before you know
it, he'd drop the peak. He fell overboard three times, and he couldn't
swim. But he was always cheerful, never seasick, and he was the most
willing man I ever knew. He was an uncommunicative soul. Never talked
about himself. His history, so far as we were concerned, began the day
he signed on the DUCHESS. Where he learned to shoot, the stars alone can
tell. He was a Yankee--that much we knew from the twang in his speech.
And that was all we ever did know.

"And now we begin to get to the point. We had bad luck in the New
Hebrides, only fourteen boys for five weeks, and we ran up before the
southeast