Among other joys and delights which I promised myself, had been a closer acquaintance with the life and times of a picturesque and romantic personage, known and feared, if all tales were true, throughout the South Seas. This was the famous, the celebrated Captain Hayston, whose name was indeed a spell to conjure with from New Zealand to the Line Islands.
Much that could excite a boyish imagination had been related to me concerning him. One man professing an intimate knowledge had described him as "a real pirate." Could higher praise be awarded? I put together all the tales I had heard about him—his great stature and vast strength, his reckless courage, his hair-breadth escapes, his wonderful brig,—cousin german, no doubt, to the "long low wicked-looking craft" in the pages of Tom Cringle's Log, and other veracious historiettes, "nourishing a youth sublime," in the long bright summer days of old; those days when we fished and bathed, ate oysters, and read alternately from early morn till the lighthouse on the South Head flashed out! My heroes had been difficult to find hitherto; they had mostly eluded my grasp. But this one was real and tangible. He would be fully up to description. His splendid scorn of law and order, mercy or moderation, his unquestioned control over mutinous crews and fierce islanders, illumined by occasional homicides and abductions, all these splendours and glories so stirred my blood, that I felt, if I could only once behold my boyhood's idol, I should not have lived in vain. Among the crew, fortunately for me as I then thought, was a sailor who had actually known in the flesh the idol of my daydreams.
"And it's the great Captain Hayston you'd like to hear about," said Dan Daly, as we sat together in the foc'sle head of the old barque Clarkstone, before we made Honolulu. Dan had been a South Sea beach-comber and whaler; moreover, had been marooned, according to his own account, escaping only by a miracle; a trader's head-man—once, indeed, more than half-killed by a rush of natives on the station. With every kind of dangerous experience short of death and burial he was familiar. On which account I regarded him with a fine boyish admiration. What a night was it, superbly beautiful, when I hung upon his words, as we sat together gazing over the moonlit water! We had changed our course owing to some dispute about food between captain and crew, and were now heading for the island of Rurutu, where fresh provisions were attainable. As I listened spellbound and entranced, the barque's bows slowly rose and fell, the wavering moonlight streamed down upon the deck, the sails, the black masses of cordage, while ghostly shadows moved rhythmically, in answering measure to every motion of the vessel.
"You must know," said Dan, in grave commencement, "it's nigh upon five years ago, when I woke up one morning in the 'Calaboose' as they call the 'lock-up' in Papiete, with a broken head. It's the port of the island of Tahiti. I was one of the hands of the American brig Cherokee, and we'd put in there on our way to San Francisco from Sydney. The skipper had given us liberty, so we went ashore and began drinking and having some fun. There was some wahines in it, in coorse—that's whats they call the women in thim parts. Somehow or other I got a knock on the head, and remimbered nothing more until I woke up in the 'Calaboose,' where I was charged with batin' a native till he was nigh dead. To make a long story short, I got six months 'hard,' and the ship sailed away without me.
"When I'd served my time, I walks into the American Consulate and asks for a passage to California.
"'Clear out,' says the Consul, 'you red-headed varmint, I have nothing to say to you, after beating an inoffensive native in the manner you did.'
"'By the powers,' says I to myself, 'you're a big blackguard, Dan Daly, when you've had a taste of liquor, but if I remimber batin' any man black, white, or whitey-brown, may I be keel-hauled. Howsomdever, that says nothing, the next thing's a new ship.'
"So I steps down to the wharf and aboord a smart-looking schooner that belonged to Carl Brander, a big merchant in Tahiti, as rich as the Emperor of China, they used to say. The mate was aboord. 'Do you want any hands?' says I.
"'We do,' says he. 'You've a taking colour of hair for this trade, my lad.'
"'How's that?'