you
could walk on three abreast; best station in the South Pacific. When old
Adams saw it, he took and shook me by the hand. 'I've dropped into a
soft thing here,' says he. 'So you have,' says I, 'and time too!' Poor
Johnny! I never saw him again but the once, and then he had changed his
tune--couldn't get on with the natives, or the whites, or something; and
the next time we came round there he was dead and buried. I took and put
up a bit of stick to him: 'John Adams, _obiit_ eighteen and sixty-eight.
Go thou and do likewise.' I missed that man. I never could see much harm
in Johnny."

"What did he die of?" I inquired.

"Some kind of sickness," says the captain. "It appears it took him
sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer and
Kennedy's Discovery. No go: he was booked beyond Kennedy. Then he had
tried to open a case of gin. No go again: not strong enough. Then he
must have turned to and run out on the verandah, and capsized over the
rail. When they found him, the next day, he was clean crazy--carried on
all the time about somebody watering his copra. Poor John!"

"Was it thought to be the island?" I asked.

"Well, it was thought to be the island, or the trouble, or something,"
he replied. "I never could hear but what it was a healthy place. Our
last man, Vigours, never turned a hair. He left because of the
beach--said he was afraid of Black Jack and Case and Whistling Jimmie,
who was still alive at the time, but got drowned soon afterward when
drunk. As for old Captain Randall, he's been here any time since
eighteen-forty, forty-five. I never could see much harm in Billy, nor
much change. Seems as if he might live to be Old Kafoozleum. No, I guess
it's healthy."

"There's a boat coming now," said I. "She's right in the pass; looks to
be a sixteen-foot whale; two white men in the stern-sheets."

"That's the boat that drowned Whistling Jimmie!" cried the captain;
"let's see the glass. Yes, that's Case, sure enough, and the darkie.
They've got a gallows bad reputation, but you know what a place the
beach is for talking. My belief, that Whistling Jimmie was the worst of
the trouble; and he's gone to glory, you see. What'll you bet they ain't
after gin? Lay you five to two they take six cases."

When these two traders came aboard I was pleased with the looks of them
at once, or, rather, with the looks of both, and the speech of one. I
was sick for white neighbours after my four years at