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
gun
or
fought
a
battle
in
his
life.
When
I
knew
him
on
board
the
Ajax,
he
was
seventy-two
years
old
and
had
plowed
the
salt
water
sixty-one
of
them.
For
sixteen
years
he
had gone
in
and
out
of
the
harbor
of
Honolulu
in
command
of
a whaleship,
and
for
sixteen
more
had been captain
of
a San Francisco
and
Sandwich
Island
passenger
packet
and
had
never
had
an
accident
or
lost a vessel.
The
simple
natives
knew
him
for
a
friend
who
never
failed
them,
and
regarded
him
as
children
regard
a father.
It
was
a
dangerous
thing
to
oppress
them
when
the
roaring
Admiral
was
around.
Two
years
before
I
knew
the
Admiral,
he
had retired
from
the
sea
on
a competence,
and
had sworn a
colossal
nine-jointed
oath
that
he
would
"never
go
within
smelling
distance
of
the
salt
water
again
as
long
as
he
lived."
And
he
had conscientiously kept it.
That
is
to
say,
he
considered
he
had kept it,
and
it
would
have
been
more
than
dangerous
to
suggest
to
him,
even
in
the
gentlest
way,
that
making
eleven
long
sea
voyages,
as
a passenger,
during
the
two
years
that
had
transpired
since
he
"retired,"
was
only
keeping
the
general
spirit
of
it
and
not
the
strict
letter.
The
Admiral
knew
only
one
narrow
line
of
conduct
to
pursue
in
any
and
all
cases
where
there
was
a fight,
and
that
was
to
shoulder
his
way
straight
in
without
an
inquiry
as
to
the
rights
or
the
merits
of
it,
and
take
the
part
of
the
weaker
side.—And
this
was
the
reason
why
he
was
always
sure
to
be
present
at
the
trial
of
any
universally
execrated
criminal
to
oppress
and
intimidate
the
jury
with
a
vindictive
pantomime
of
what
he
would
do
to
them
if
he
ever
caught
them
out
of
the
box.
And
this
was
why
harried
cats
and
outlawed
dogs
that
knew
him
confidently
took
sanctuary
under
his
chair
in
time
of
trouble.
In
the
beginning
he
was
the
most
frantic
and
bloodthirsty
Union
man
that
drew
breath
in
the
shadow
of
the
Flag;
but
the
instant
the
Southerners
began
to
go
down
before
the
sweep
of
the
Northern
armies,
he
ran
up
the
Confederate
colors
and
from
that
time
till
the
end
was
a
rampant
and
inexorable
secessionist.
He
hated
intemperance
with
a
more
uncompromising
animosity
than
any
individual
I
have
ever
met,
of
either
sex;
and
he
was
never
tired
of
storming
against
it
and
beseeching
friends
and
strangers
alike
to
be
wary
and
drink
with
moderation.
And
yet
if
any
creature
had been guileless
enough
to
intimate
that
his
absorbing
nine
gallons
of
"straight"
whiskey
during
our
voyage
was
any
fraction
short
of
rigid
or
inflexible
abstemiousness,
in
that
self-same
moment
the
old
man
would
have
spun
him
to
the
uttermost
parts
of
the
earth
in
the
whirlwind
of
his
wrath. Mind, I
am
not
saying
his
whisky
ever
affected
his
head
or
his
legs,
for
it
did
not,
in
even
the
slightest degree.
He
was
a
capacious
container,
but
he
did
not
hold
enough
for
that.
He
took
a
level
tumblerful
of
whisky
every
morning
before
he
put
his
clothes
on—"to
sweeten
his
bilgewater,"
he
said.—He
took
another
after
he
got
the
most
of
his
clothes
on, "to
settle
his
mind
and
give
him
his
bearings."
He
then
shaved,
and
put
on
a clean shirt;
after
which
he
recited
the
Lord's
Prayer
in
a fervent,
thundering
bass
that
shook
the
ship
to
her
kelson
and
suspended
all
conversation
in
the
main
cabin. Then,
at
this
stage, being invariably "by
the
head,"
or
"by
the
stern,"
or
"listed
to
port
or
starboard,"
he
took
one
more
to
"put
him
on
an
even
keel
so
that
he
would
mind
his
hellum
and
not
miss
stays
and
go
about,
every
time
he
came
up
in
the
wind."—And now,
his
state-room
door
swung
open
and
the
sun
of
his
benignant face
beamed
redly
out
upon
men
and
women
and
children,
and
he
roared
his
"Shipmets a'hoy!"
in
a
way
that
was
calculated
to
wake
the
dead
and
precipitate
the
final
resurrection;
and
forth
he
strode, a
picture
to
look
at
and
a
presence
to
enforce
attention.
Stalwart
and
portly;
not
a
gray
hair; broadbrimmed slouch hat; semi-sailor toggery
of
blue
navy
flannel—roomy
and
ample; a stately
expanse
of
shirt-front
and
a liberal amount
of
black
silk
neck-cloth
tied
with
a
sailor
knot;
large
chain
and
imposing seals
impending
from
his
fob; awe-inspiring feet,
and
"a
hand
like
the
hand
of
Providence,"
as
his
whaling brethren expressed it; wrist-bands
and
sleeves
pushed
back
half
way
to
the
elbow,
out
of
respect
for
the
warm
weather,
and
exposing
hairy arms,
gaudy
with
red
and
blue anchors, ships,
and
goddesses
of
liberty
tattooed
in
India
ink.
But
these
details
were
only
secondary
matters—his face
was
the
lodestone
that
chained
the
eye.
It
was
a sultry disk,
glowing
determinedly
out
through
a
weather
beaten mask
of
mahogany,
and
studded
with
warts,
seamed
with
scars, "blazed"
all
over
with
unfailing
fresh
slips
of
the
razor;
and
with
cheery eyes,
under
shaggy
brows,
contemplating
the
world
from
over
the
back
of
a
gnarled
crag
of
a
nose
that
loomed
vast
and
lonely
out
of
the
undulating
immensity
that
spread
away
from
its
foundations.
At
his
heels
frisked
the
darling
of
his
bachelor
estate,
his
terrier
"Fan," a
creature
no
larger
than
a squirrel.
The
main
part
of
his
daily
life
was
occupied
in
looking
after
"Fan,"
in
a
motherly
way,
and
doctoring
her
for
a
hundred
ailments
which
existed
only
in
his
imagination.
The
Admiral
seldom
read newspapers;
and
when
he
did
he
never
believed
anything
they
said.
He
read nothing,
and
believed
in
nothing,
but
"The
Old
Guard," a
secession
periodical
published
in
New
York.
He
carried a
dozen
copies
of
it
with
him, always,
and
referred
to
them
for
all
required information.
If
it
was
not
there,
he
supplied
it
himself,
out
of
a bountiful fancy,
inventing
history, names, dates,
and
every
thing
else
necessary
to
make
his
point
good
in
an
argument.
Consequently
he
was
a
formidable
antagonist
in
a dispute. Whenever
he
swung clear
of
the
record
and
began
to
create
history,
the
enemy
was
helpless
and
had
to
surrender. Indeed,
the
enemy
could
not
keep
from
betraying
some
little
spark
of
indignation
at
his
manufactured history—and
when
it
came
to
indignation,
that
was
the
Admiral's
very
"best hold."
He
was
always
ready
for
a
political
argument,
and
if
nobody
started
one
he
would
do
it
himself.
With
his
third
retort
his
temper
would
begin
to
rise,
and
within
five
minutes
he
would
be
blowing a gale,
and
within
fifteen
his
smoking-room
audience
would
be
utterly
stormed
away
and
the
old
man
left
solitary
and
alone,
banging
the
table
with
his
fist,
kicking
the
chairs,
and
roaring a
hurricane
of
profanity.
It
got so,
after
a while,
that
whenever
the
Admiral
approached,
with
politics
in
his
eye,
the
passengers
would
drop
out
with
quiet
accord,
afraid
to
meet him;
and
he
would
camp
on
a
deserted
field.
But
he
found
his
match
at
last,
and
before
a
full
company.
At
one
time
or
another, everybody had
entered
the
lists against
him
and
been routed,
except
the
quiet
passenger
Williams.
He
had
never
been
able
to
get
an
expression
of
opinion
out
of
him
on
politics.
But
now,
just
as
the
Admiral
drew
near
the
door
and
the
company
were
about
to
slip out,
Williams
said: "Admiral,
are
you
certain
about
that
circumstance
concerning
the
clergymen
you
mentioned
the
other
day?"—referring
to
a
piece
of
the
Admiral's manufactured history.
Every
one
was
amazed
at
the
man's rashness.
The
idea
of
deliberately
inviting
annihilation
was
a
thing
incomprehensible.
The
retreat
came
to
a halt;
then
everybody sat
down
again
wondering,
to
await
the
upshot
of
it.
The
Admiral
himself
was
as
surprised
as
any
one.
He
paused
in
the
door,
with
his
red
handkerchief
half
raised
to
his
sweating
face,
and
contemplated
the
daring
reptile
in
the
corner. "Certain
of
it?
Am
I
certain
of
it?
Do
you
think
I've been lying
about
it?
What
do
you
take
me
for? Anybody
that
don't
know
that
circumstance, don't
know
anything; a
child
ought
to
know
it. Read
up
your
history! Read
it
up——-,
and
don't
come
asking
a
man
if
he's
certain
about
a
bit
of
ABC
stuff
that
the
very
southern
niggers
know
all
about."
Here
the
Admiral's
fires
began
to
wax
hot,
the
atmosphere
thickened,
the
coming
earthquake
rumbled,
he
began
to
thunder
and
lighten.
Within
three
minutes
his
volcano
was
in
full
irruption
and
he
was
discharging
flames
and
ashes
of
indignation,
belching
black
volumes
of
foul
history
aloft,
and
vomiting
red-hot
torrents
of
profanity
from
his
crater. Meantime
Williams
sat silent,
and
apparently
deeply
and
earnestly
interested
in
what
the
old
man
was
saying.
By
and
by,
when
the
lull came,
he
said
in
the
most
deferential way,
and
with
the
gratified air
of
a
man
who
has had a
mystery
cleared
up
which
had been puzzling
him
uncomfortably: "Now I
understand
it. I
always
thought
I
knew
that
piece
of
history
well
enough,
but
was
still
afraid
to
trust
it,
because
there
was
not
that
convincing
particularity
about
it
that
one
likes
to
have
in
history;
but
when
you
mentioned
every
name,
the
other
day,
and
every
date,
and
every
little
circumstance,
in
their
just
order
and
sequence, I said
to
myself,
this
sounds
something
like—this
is
history—this
is
putting
it
in
a
shape
that
gives
a
man
confidence;
and
I said
to
myself
afterward, I
will
just
ask
the
Admiral
if
he
is
perfectly
certain
about
the
details,
and
if
he
is
I
will
come
out
and
thank
him
for
clearing
this
matter
up
for
me.
And
that
is
what
I
want
to
do
now—for
until
you
set
that
matter
right
it
was
nothing
but
just
a
confusion
in
my mind,
without
head
or
tail
to
it."
Nobody
ever
saw
the
Admiral
look
so
mollified before,
and
so
pleased.
Nobody
had
ever
received
his
bogus
history
as
gospel
before;
its
genuineness had
always
been
called
in
question
either
by
words
or
looks;
but
here
was
a
man
that
not
only
swallowed
it
all
down,
but
was
grateful
for
the
dose.
He
was
taken a back;
he
hardly
knew
what
to
say;
even
his
profanity
failed
him. Now,
Williams
continued,
modestly
and
earnestly: "But Admiral,
in
saying
that
this
was
the
first
stone
thrown,
and
that
this
precipitated
the
war,
you
have
overlooked
a
circumstance
which
you
are
perfectly
familiar
with,
but
which
has
escaped
your
memory.
Now
I
grant
you
that
what
you
have
stated
is
correct
in
every
detail—to wit:
that
on
the
16th
of
October, 1860,
two
Massachusetts clergymen,
named
Waite
and
Granger, went
in
disguise
to
the
house
of
John Moody,
in
Rockport,
at
dead
of
night,
and
dragged
forth
two
southern
women
and
their
two
little
children,
and
after
tarring
and
feathering
them
conveyed
them
to
Boston
and
burned
them
alive
in
the
State
House
square;
and
I
also
grant
your
proposition
that
this
deed
is
what
led
to
the
secession
of
South
Carolina
on
the
20th
of
December
following.
Very
well." [Here
the
company
were
pleasantly
surprised
to
hear
Williams
proceed
to
come
back
at
the
Admiral
with
his
own
invincible
weapon—clean, pure, manufactured history,
without
a
word
of
truth
in
it.] "Very well, I say.
But
Admiral,
why
overlook
the
Willis
and
Morgan
case
in
South
Carolina?
You
are
too
well
informed
a
man
not
to
know
all
about
that
circumstance.
Your
arguments
and
your
conversations
have
shown
you
to
be
intimately
conversant
with
every
detail
of
this
national
quarrel.
You
develop
matters
of
history
every
day
that
show
plainly
that
you
are
no
smatterer
in
it,
content
to
nibble
about
the
surface,
but
a
man
who
has
searched
the
depths
and
possessed yourself
of
everything
that
has a bearing
upon
the
great
question. Therefore,
let
me
just
recall
to
your
mind
that
Willis
and
Morgan case—though I
see
by
your
face
that
the
whole
thing
is
already
passing
through
your
memory
at
this
moment.
On
the
12th
of
August, 1860,
two
months
before
the
Waite
and
Granger
affair,
two
South
Carolina
clergymen,
named
John H. Morgan
and
Winthrop L. Willis,
one
a Methodist
and
the
other
an
Old
School
Baptist, disguised themselves,
and
went
at
midnight
to
the
house
of
a planter
named
Thompson—Archibald F. Thompson,
Vice
President
under
Thomas
Jefferson,—and
took
thence,
at
midnight,
his
widowed
aunt, (a
Northern
woman,)
and
her
adopted
child,
an
orphan—named Mortimer Highie, afflicted
with
epilepsy
and
suffering
at
the
time
from
white
swelling
on
one
of
his
legs,
and
compelled
to
walk
on
crutches
in
consequence;
and
the
two
ministers,
in
spite
of
the
pleadings
of
the
victims,
dragged
them
to
the
bush,
tarred
and
feathered
them,
and
afterward
burned
them
at
the
stake
in
the
city
of
Charleston.
You
remember
perfectly
well
what
a
stir
it
made;
you
remember
perfectly
well
that
even
the
Charleston
Courier
stigmatized
the
act
as
being unpleasant,
of
questionable propriety,
and
scarcely
justifiable,
and
likewise
that
it
would
not
be
matter
of
surprise
if
retaliation
ensued.
And
you
remember
also,
that
this
thing
was
the
cause
of
the
Massachusetts outrage. Who, indeed,
were
the
two
Massachusetts ministers?
and
who
were
the
two
Southern
women
they
burned? I
do
not
need
to
remind you, Admiral,
with
your
intimate
knowledge
of
history,
that
Waite
was
the
nephew
of
the
woman
burned
in
Charleston;
that
Granger
was
her
cousin
in
the
second
degree,
and
that
the
woman
they
burned
in
Boston
was
the
wife
of
John H. Morgan,
and
the
still
loved
but
divorced
wife
of
Winthrop L. Willis. Now, Admiral,
it
is
only
fair
that
you
should
acknowledge
that
the
first
provocation
came
from
the
Southern
preachers
and
that
the
Northern
ones
were
justified
in
retaliating.
In
your
arguments
you
never
yet
have
shown
the
least
disposition
to
withhold
a
just
verdict
or
be
in
anywise
unfair,
when
authoritative
history
condemned
your
position,
and
therefore
I
have
no
hesitation
in
asking
you
to
take
the
original
blame
from
the
Massachusetts ministers,
in
this
matter,
and
transfer
it
to
the
South
Carolina
clergymen
where
it
justly belongs."
The
Admiral
was
conquered.
This
sweet
spoken
creature
who
swallowed
his
fraudulent
history
as
if
it
were
the
bread
of
life;
basked
in
his
furious
blasphemy
as
if
it
were
generous
sunshine; found
only
calm, even-handed
justice
in
his
rampart
partisanship;
and
flooded
him
with
invented
history
so
sugarcoated
with
flattery
and
deference
that
there
was
no
rejecting it,
was
"too many"
for
him.
He
stammered
some
awkward,
profane
sentences
about
the——-Willis
and
Morgan
business
having
escaped
his
memory,
but
that
he
"remembered
it
now,"
and
then,
under
pretence
of
giving
Fan
some
medicine
for
an
imaginary
cough,
drew
out
of
the
battle
and
went away, a
vanquished
man.
Then
cheers
and
laughter
went up,
and
Williams,
the
ship's
benefactor
was
a hero.
The
news
went
about
the
vessel,
champagne
was
ordered,
and
enthusiastic
reception
instituted
in
the
smoking
room,
and
everybody
flocked
thither
to
shake
hands
with
the
conqueror.
The
wheelman said afterward,
that
the
Admiral
stood
up
behind
the
pilot
house
and
"ripped
and
cursed
all
to
himself"
till
he
loosened
the
smokestack
guys
and
becalmed
the
mainsail.
The
Admiral's power
was
broken.
After
that,
if
he
began argument, somebody
would
bring
Williams,
and
the
old
man
would
grow
weak
and
begin
to
quiet
down
at
once.
And
as
soon
as
he
was
done,
Williams
in
his
dulcet,
insinuating
way,
would
invent
some
history
(referring
for
proof,
to
the
old
man's
own
excellent
memory
and
to
copies
of
"The
Old
Guard" known
not
to
be
in
his
possession)
that
would
turn
the
tables completely
and
leave
the
Admiral
all
abroad
and
helpless.
By
and
by
he
came
to
so
dread
Williams
and
his
gilded tongue
that
he
would
stop talking
when
he
saw
him
approach,
and
finally
ceased
to
mention
politics
altogether,
and
from
that
time forward
there
was
entire
peace
and
serenity
in
the
ship.