"Captain," I said, "I can stay here no longer with you. I am sick of seeing men flogged till their backs are like raw meat, even though they are mutinous. If I thought any words of mine would do good, I would earnestly beg of you to adopt milder measures. Every day that passes you run the gauntlet, so to speak, of these men's deadly hatred, I know; for how can I avoid hearing the mutterings and seeing the fierce glances of the people—that you are surrounded with foes, and that any moment may be your last."
He placed his hand on my shoulder in his old way. "True, my lad, true; but if they are dangerous to meddle with, so am I. The white men, young Harry excepted, would gladly see me lying out there on the sand with a bullet hole in my skull; but, by ——, I'll shoot every mother's son of them if I detect any treachery.... And so you wish to leave me?"
I considered a moment and then answered, "Sorry am I to say it, but I do."
"Come out to the beach, my lad, and talk to me there. This house is stifling; another month of this life would send me mad."
We walked along the weather side for about a mile, then seating ourselves on a huge flat rock, watched the rollers tumbling in over the reef and hissing along the sand at our feet. Hayston then spoke freely to me of his troubles, his hopes, and disappointments, begging me to remain with him—going, indeed, the length of a half promise to use gentler methods of correction in future.
I yielded for a time, but after another week the fights and floggings, followed by threats of vengeance, commenced anew. Two incidents also, following close upon one another, led me to sever my connection with the Captain finally, though in a friendly spirit.
The first was an attack single-handed upon the Kusaie village of Utwé, driving the men before him like a flock of sheep. Some who ventured to resist were felled by blows of his fist. Then he picked out half a dozen of the youngest women, and drove them to the men's quarters, telling them to keep them till the husbands and families ransomed them.
This was all because he had been told that Likiak Sâ had been to the village, and urged the natives to remove to Lêlé, where a man-of-war was expected to arrive from Honolulu, and that Hayston dared not follow them there.
The next matter that went wrong was that he desired me to bring the trade books, and go over the various traders' accounts with him.
One of these books was missing, although I remembered placing the whole bundle in the big chest with the charts and chronometers. He declared that the loss of this book, with some important accounts of his trading stations in the Line and Marshall Islands, rendered the others valueless.