A few minutes after he had gone on shore the brigantine's boat came alongside, and her captain and three of his passengers stepped on board. He introduced himself as Captain Lynch Richards, and his friends as Brothers So-and-So of the “Islands Brothers' Association of Christians “. They were a dull, melancholy looking lot, Richards alone showing some mental and physical activity. Declining spirituous refreshments, they all had tea and something to eat. Then they asked me if I would let them have some provisions, and accept trade goods in payment.
As they had no money—except about one hundred dollars between them—I let them have what provisions we could spare, and then accepted their invitation to visit the Julia.
I went with them in their own boat—two of the saints pulling—and as they flopped the blades of their oars into the water and I studied their appearance, I could not but agree with Dick Warren's description—“as dirty as Indian fakirs,” for not only were their garments dirty, but their faces looked as if they had not come into contact with soap and water for a twelvemonth. Richards, the skipper, was a comparatively young man, and seemed to have given some little attention to his attire, for he was wearing a decent suit of navy blue with a clean collar and tie.
Getting alongside we clambered on deck—there was no side ladder—and I was taken into the cabin where Richards introduced me to his wife. She was a pretty, fragile-looking young woman of about five and twenty years of age, and looked so worn out and unhappy that my heart was filled with pity. During the brief conversation we held I asked her if she and her husband would come on board our vessel in the afternoon and have tea, and mentioned that we had piles and piles of books and magazines on the ship to which she could help herself.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I guess I should like to,” she said as she looked at her husband.
Then I was introduced to the rest of the company in turn, as they sat all round the cabin, half a dozen of them on the transom lockers reminding me somehow of dejected and meditative storks. Glad of an excuse to get out of the stuffy and ill-ventilated cabin and the uninspiring society of the unwashed Brethren, I eagerly assented to the captain's suggestion to have a look round the ship before we “talked business,” i.e., concerning the trade goods I was to select in payment for the provisions with which I had supplied him. One of the Brethren, an elderly, goat-faced person, came with us, and we returned on deck.
Never before had I seen anything like the Julia. She was an old, soft-pine-built ex-Puget Sound lumberman, literally tumbling to decay, aloft and below. Her splintering decks, to preserve them somewhat from the torrid sun, were covered over with old native mats, and her spars, from want of attention, were splitting open in great gaping cracks, and were as black as those of a collier. How such a craft made the voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu, and from there far to the south of the Line and then back north to the Gilbert Group, was a marvel.
I was taken down the hold and showed what the “cranks” called their trade goods and asked to select what I thought was a fair thing in exchange for the provisions I had given them. Heavens! Such a collection of utter, utter rubbish! second-hand musical boxes in piles, gaudy lithographs, iron bedsteads, “brown paper” boots and shoes eaten half away by cockroaches. Sets of cheap and nasty toilet ware, two huge cases of common and much damaged wax dolls, barrels of rotted dried apples, and decayed pork, an ice-making plant, bales and bales of second-hand clothing—men's, women's and children's—cheap and poisonous sweets in jars, thousands of twopenny looking-glasses, penny whistles, accordions that wouldn't accord, as the cockroaches had eaten them up except the wood and metal work, school slates and pencils, and a box of Bibles and Moody and Sankey hymn-books. And the smell was something awful! I asked the captain what was the cause of it—it overpowered even the horrible odour of the decayed pork and rotted apples. He replied placidly that he thought it came from a hundred kegs of salted salmon bellies which were stowed below everything else, and that he “guessed some of them hed busted”.
“It is enough to breed a pestilence,” I said; “why do you not all turn-to, get the stuff up and heave it overboard? You must excuse me, captain, but for Heaven's sake let us get on deck.”
On returning to the poop we found that the skipper of our vessel had come on board, and was conversing with Mrs. Richards. I took him aside and told him of what I had seen, and suggested that we should make them a present of the provisions. He quite agreed with me, so turning to Captain Richards and the goat-faced old man and several other of the Brethren who had joined them, I said that the captain and I hoped that they would accept the provisions from us, as we felt sure that our owners would not mind. And I also added that we would send them a few bags of flour and some other things during the course of the day. And then the captain, knowing that Captain Richards and his wife were coming to have tea with us, took pity on the Brethren and said, he hoped they would all come to breakfast in the morning.