"It ain't no fun, blackbirdin', McGuffey. After you've got 'em aboard, they may take a notion to jump overboard and swim back, so you get 'em down below an' clap the hatches on 'em until you're out of sight o' land, an' the beggars howl an' there's hell to pay.
"Me an' Bull McGinty headed for the Gilberts that first trip, an' managed to pick up a fair consignment of labour. We touched in at Nonuti the very last place, which, as I says, is on the island o' Aranuka, right under the Hakatuea volcano. There was some strappin' big buck native niggers there that would fetch $300 a head Mex, an' so me an' Bull goes ashore to pow-wow with the chief. He was a fat old boy named Poui-Slam-Bang, or some such name, an' he received us as nice as you please. Me an' Bull rubbed noses with Poui-Slam-Bang an' all the head men, and they give a big feed in our honour. Roast pig an' roast duck an' stewed chicken an' all the tropical trimmin's we had, Mac, including a little barrel o' furniture polish that Bull brought ashore, labelled Three Star Hennessy on the outside an' Three Ply Deviltry inside.
"While we was at the feast, with everybody squattin' around on their hind legs, pokin' their mits into a big wooden bowl, Poui-Slam-Bang pipes up his only daughter, a lovely wench about seventeen years old with a name that nobody can pronounce. I call her Pinky, and of all the women I ever meets, black, white, brown, red, or yellow, this Pinky is the loveliest, and has 'em all hull down. She's wearin' a palm leaf petticoat and a string o' shark's teeth around her neck with an empty sardine box for a pendant. She has flowers in her hair, which is braided in pig-tails, different from the other girls. Her eyes—McGuffey, them eyes! Like a pair of fireflies floatin' in sorghum. And as she stands there working her toes in th' sand, she never takes her eyes off them fine red whiskers o' mine.
"Bull gives her a cigar, and it's plain that he's taken with her, but she never so much as looks at Bull. My whiskers has done the trick—so bimeby, when all hands is feeling jolly, including me an' McGinty, I sidles up to Pinky an' sorter gives her to understand that she wouldn't have to clap me in irons to fondle them red whiskers o' mine. She sticks a flower in them, Mac, s'help me, and then giggles foolish an' ducks into the bush.
"Well, we rigs up a deal with Poui-Slam-Bang and next afternoon stand out for the entrance with forty odd head of labour in excess of what we had when we arrived. We'd cleared the reef, and was comin' about around Hakatuea Head, when what d'ye suppose we sight? Nothin' more or less than Miss Pinky Poui-Slam-Bang swimmin' right across our bows. She was more than a mile out an' comin' like a shark, hand over hand. Before I could yell to the boy at the wheel to luff up, so we wouldn't run the girl down, we was right on top of her.
"'They'll have to revise the census of Aranuka,' says Bull McGinty. I do believe we hit that girl an' drove her under.'
"We was both rubberin' astern an' to starboard an' port, but not a sign o' the girl do we see. I got out my glasses an' searched around for full half an hour, an' by that time we was five miles out to sea, and it wasn't no use lookin' any more, an' besides I had work to attend to.
"We sailed along all the afternoon, over a sea as smooth as a dance-hall floor. Along about sunset I was up on the fo'castle head singin' 'Nancy Brown' when who should pop up onto the bowsprit but Pinky. She sat there a minute danglin' her legs an' smilin' an' s'help me, Mac, if it hadn't been daylight still, I'd a-swore she was a sperrit. I jumped two feet in the air an' came down with my mouth open. Pinky hops up on the bowsprit, and runs along to the fo'castle head, an' then I seen she was real. The little cuss! She'd swung herself up into the martingale, an' there she'd squatted all the afternoon until we was out o' sight o' land. Of course, she got a ducking every few minutes, but what's a duckin' to them kind o' people?
"I grabs hold o' Pinky, mighty glad to know we hadn't killed her, and brings her before Bull McGinty.
"'She's in love with some one of these black bucks aboard,' says Bull. 'That's why she's followed. Isn't she the likely lookin' wench, Gib? I do believe I'll——'