I met him first in a hurricane. And though we had been through
the hurricane on the same schooner, it was not until the schooner
had gone to pieces under us that I first laid eyes on him.
Without doubt I had seen him with the rest of the Kanaka crew on
board, but I had not consciously been aware of his existence, for
the Petite Jeanne was rather overcrowded. In addition to her
eight or ten Kanaka sea men, her white captain, mate, and
supercargo, and her six cabin passengers, she sailed from
Rangiroa with something like eighty-five deck
passengers--Paumotuans and Tahitians, men, women, and children,
each with a trade-box, to say nothing of sleeping-mats, blankets,
and clothes-bundles.

The pearling season in the Paumotus was over, and all hands were
returning to Tahiti. The six of us cabin passengers were
pearl-buyers. Two were Americans, one was Ah Choon, the whitest
Chinese I have ever known, one was a German, one was a Polish
Jew, and I completed the half-dozen. It had been a prosperous
season. Not one of us had cause for complaint, nor one of the
eighty-five deck passengers either. All had done well, and all
were looking forward to a rest-off and a good time in Papeete. Of
course the Petite Jeanne was overloaded. he was only seventy
tons, and she had no right to carry a tithe of the mob she had on
board. Beneath her hatches she was crammed and jammed with pearl
shell and copra. Even the trade-room was packed full of shell. It
was a miracle that the sailors could work her. There was no
moving about the decks. They simply climbed back and forth along
the rails. In the night-time they walked upon the sleepers, who
carpeted the deck, two deep, I'll swear. Oh, and there were pigs
and chickens on deck, and sacks of yams, while every conceivable