CHAPTER II
WILLIAM HENRY HAYSTON
These were the first particulars I ever heard of the man who had afterwards so great an influence upon my destiny that no incident of my sojourn with him will ever be forgotten. A man with whom I went into the jaws of death and returned unhurt. A man who, no matter what his faults may have been, possessed qualities which, had they been devoted to higher aims in life, might have rendered him the hero of a nation.
Our Captain's altercation with the crew nearly blossomed into a mutiny. This was compromised, however, one of the conditions of peace being that we should touch at Rurutu, one of the five islands forming the Tubuai group. This we accordingly did, and, steering for San Francisco, experienced no further adventures until we sighted the Golden Gate. When our cargo was sold I left the ship.
My occupation being from this time gone, I used to stroll down to the wharf from my lodgings in Harvard Street to look at the foreign vessels. Wandering aimlessly, I one day made the acquaintance of a "hard-shell down-easter," with the truly American name of Slocum, master of a venerable-looking rate called the Constitution. He himself was a dried-up specimen of the old style of Yankee captain, with a face that resembled in colour a brown painted oilskin, and hands like an albatross's feet. He had been running for a number of years to Tahiti, taking out timber and returning with island produce.
Not being a proud man, he permitted me to stand drinks for him in a well-known liquor saloon in Third Street, where we had long yarns over his trading adventures in the Pacific.
One Sunday morning, I remember it as if yesterday, we were sitting in a private room off the bar. Slocum was advising me to come with him on his next trip and share the luxuries of the Constitution's table, for which he asked the modest sum of a hundred dollars to Tahiti and back, when we heard some one enter and address the bar-keeper. "Great Scott!" came the reply, "it's Captain Hayston! How air you, Captain, and whar d'ye come from?"
"I've come to try and find Ben Peese. We're going to form a new station at Arrecifu. He left me at Yap in the Carolines to come here and buy a schooner with a light draught; but he never turned up; I'm afraid that after he left Yap he met with some accident."
The moment Slocum heard the stranger's voice his face underwent a marvellous change. All his assurance seemed to have left him. He whispered to me, "That's Bully Hayston! I guess I'll lie low till he clears out. I don't want to be seen with him, as it'll sorter damage my character. Besides, he's such a vi'lent critter."