away on the first steamer to Auckland.

At first, I am free to confess, I resented Otoo's poking his nose
into my business. But I knew that he was wholly unselfish, and
soon I had to acknowledge his wisdom and discretion. He had his
eyes open always to my main chance, and he was both keen-sighted
and far-sighted. In time he became my counselor, until he knew
more of my business than I did myself. He really had my interest
at heart more than I did. Mine was the magnificent carelessness
of youth, for I preferred romance to dollars, and adventure to a
comfortable billet with all night in. So it was well that I had
some one to look out for me. I know that if it had not been for
Otoo, I should not be here to-day.

Of numerous instances, let me give one. I had had some experience
in blackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and
I were on the beach in Samoa--we really were on the beach and
hard aground--when my chance came to go as a recruiter on a
blackbird brig. Otoo signed on before the mast, and for the next
half-dozen years, in as many ships, we knocked about the wildest
portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he always pulled
stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom, in recruiting labor, was to
land the recruiter on the beach. The covering boat always lay on
its oars several hundred feet off shore, while the recruiter's
boat, also lying on its oars, kept afloat on the edge of the
beach. When I landed with my trade goods, leaving my steering
sweep apeak, Otoo left his stroke position and came into the
stern sheets, where a Winchester lay ready to hand under a flap
of canvas. The boat's crew was also armed, the Sniders concealed
under canvas flaps that ran the length of the gunwales. While I