PART I

CHAPTER I.

MY RECEPTION ABOARD

IT WAS the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our
escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-topsail
aback about a league from the land, and was the only object that
broke the broad expanse of the ocean.

On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking
craft, her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and
bleached nearly white, and everything denoting an ill state of
affairs aboard. The four boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her
a whaler. Leaning carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors,
wild, haggard-looking fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks;
some of them with cheeks of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon
changes the rich berry-brown of a seaman's complexion in the tropics.

On the quarter-deck was one whom I took for the chief mate. He wore a
broad-brimmed Panama hat, and his spy-glass was levelled as we
advanced.

When we came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck, and
everybody gazed at us with inquiring eyes. And well they might. To
say nothing of the savage boat's crew, panting with excitement, all
gesture and vociferation, my own appearance was calculated to excite
curiosity. A robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders,