Chapter LXII

After a three months' absence, I found myself in San Francisco again,
without a cent. When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had become
too mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and there were no
vacancies on the evening journals,) I was created San Francisco
correspondent of the Enterprise, and at the end of five months I was out
of debt, but my interest in my work was gone; for my correspondence being
a daily one, without rest or respite, I got unspeakably tired of it.
I wanted another change. The vagabond instinct was strong upon me.
Fortune favored and I got a new berth and a delightful one. It was to go
down to the Sandwich Islands and write some letters for the Sacramento
Union, an excellent journal and liberal with employees.

We sailed in the propeller Ajax, in the middle of winter. The almanac
called it winter, distinctly enough, but the weather was a compromise
between spring and summer. Six days out of port, it became summer
altogether. We had some thirty passengers; among them a cheerful soul
by the name of Williams, and three sea-worn old whaleship captains going
down to join their vessels. These latter played euchre in the smoking
room day and night, drank astonishing quantities of raw whisky without
being in the least affected by it, and were the happiest people I think
I ever saw. And then there was "the old Admiral--" a retired whaleman.
He was a roaring, terrific combination of wind and lightning and thunder,
and earnest, whole-souled profanity. But nevertheless he was tender-
hearted as a girl. He was a raving, deafening, devastating typhoon,
laying waste the cowering seas but with an unvexed refuge in the centre
where all comers were safe and at rest. Nobody could know the "Admiral"
without liking him; and in a sudden and dire emergency I think no friend
of his would know which to choose--to be cursed by him or prayed for by a
less efficient person.

His Title of "Admiral" was more strictly "official" than any ever worn by
a naval officer before or since, perhaps--for it was the voluntary
offering of a whole nation, and came direct from the people themselves
without any intermediate red tape--the people of the Sandwich Islands.
It was a title that came to him freighted with affection, and honor, and
appreciation of his unpretending merit. And in testimony of the
genuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flag
should be devised for him and used solely to welcome his coming and wave
him God-speed in his going. From that time forth, whenever his ship was
signaled in the offing, or he catted his anchor and stood out to sea,
that ensign streamed from the royal halliards on the parliament house and
the nation lifted their hats to it with spontaneous accord.

Yet he had never fired a