denies me in more northern latitudes. The oddest part of it is, though I'm what the doctors call consumptive in England—only fit to lie on a sofa and read good books—the moment I get clear away into the Tropics I'm a strong man again, prepared to fight any fellow of my own age and weight, and as fit for seamanship as the best Jack Tar in my whole equipment. The Albatross numbers eighteen in crew, all told; and as I am not a rich enough or selfish enough a man to keep up a vessel all for my own amusement, my brother Jim and I combine business and pleasure by doing a mixed trade in copra or dried cocoa-nut with the natives from time to time, or by running across between Sydney and San Francisco with a light cargo of goods for the Australian market.

Our habit was therefore to cruise in and out among the islands, with no very definite aim except that of picking up a stray trade whenever we could make one, and keeping as much within sight of land, for the sake of company, as circumstances permitted us. And that is just why, though bound for Fiji, we had gone so far out of our way that particular voyage as to be under the lee of Erromanga.

As for our black Polynesian boy, Nassaline, to tell you the truth, I am proud of that lad, for he's a trophy of war; we got him at the point of the sword off a slaver. She was a fast French sloop, "recruiting" for New Caledonia, as they call it, on one of the New Hebrides, when the Albatross happened to come to anchor, by good luck or good management, in the same harbor. From the moment we arrived I had my eye on that smart French sloop, for I more than half suspected the means she was employing to beat up recruits. Early next morning, as I lay in my bunk, I heard a fearful row going on in boats not far from our moorings; and when I rushed up on deck, half-dressed, to find out what the noise was about, blessed if I didn't see whole gangs of angry natives in canoes, naked of course as the day they were born, or only dressed, like the Ancient Britons, in a neat coat of paint, pursuing the French sloop's jolly-boat, which was being rowed at high pressure by all its crew toward its own vessel. "Great guns!" said I, "what's up?" So, looking closer, I could make out four strapping young black boys lying manacled in the bottom, kicking and screaming as hard as their legs and throats could go, while the Frenchmen rowed away for dear life, and the Kanakas in the canoes paddled wildly after them, taking cock-shots at them with very bad aim from time to time with arrows and fire-arms. Such a splutter and noise you never heard in all your life. Ducks fighting in a pond were a mere circumstance to it.

"Tom Blake!" I sang out, "is the gig afloat there?"

"Aye, aye, sir," says Tom, jumping up. "She's ready at the starn. Shall we off and at 'em?"

"Right you are, Tom!" says I; "all hands to the gig here!"

Well, in less than three minutes I'd got that boat under way, and was rowing ahead between the Frenchmen and their sloop, with our Remingtons ready, and everything in order for a good stand-up fight of it.

When the Frenchmen saw we meant to intercept them, and found themselves cut off between the savages on one side and an English crew well-armed with rifles of precision on the other, they thought it was about time to open negotiations with the opposing party. So the skipper stopped, as airy as a gentleman walking down the Boulevards, and called out to me in French, "What do you want ahoy, there?"

"Ahoy there yourself," says I, in my very best Ollandorff. "We want to know what you're doing with those youngsters?"

"Oh! it's that, is it?" says the Frenchman, as cool as a cucumber, coming nearer a bit, and talking as though we'd merely stopped him with polite inquiries about the time of day or the price of spring chickens; while the savages, seeing from our manner we were friendly to their side, left off firing for a while for fear of hitting us. "Why, these are apprentices of ours—indentured apprentices. We've bought them from their parents by honest trade—paid for 'em with Sniders, ammunition, calico and tobacco; and if you want to see our papers and theirs, Monsieur, here they are, look you, all perfectly en règle," and he held up the bundle for us to inspect in full—with a telescope, I suppose—at a hundred yards' distance.

"Row nearer, boys," I said, "and we'll talk a bit with this polite gentleman. He seems to have views of his own, I fancy, about the proper method of engaging servants."

But when we tried to row up the Frenchman stopped and called out at the top of his voice, in a very different tone, all bustle and bluster, "Look out ahead there! If you come a yard closer we open fire. We want no interference from any of you Methodistical missionary fellows."

"We ain't missionaries," I answered quietly, cocking my revolver in the friendliest possible fashion right in front of him; "we're traders and yachtsmen. Show 'em your Remingtons, boys, and let 'em see we mean business! That's right. Ready! present!—and fire when I tell you! Now then, Monsieur, you bought these boys, you say. So far, good. Next then, if you please, who did you buy them from?"

The Frenchman turned pale when he saw we were well-armed and meant inquiry; but he tried to carry off still with a little face and bluster. "Why, their parents, of course," he answered, with a signal to his friends in the ship to cover us with their fire-arms.

"From their parents? O, yes! Well, how did you know the sellers were their parents?" I asked, still pointing my revolver towards him. "And why are the boys so unwilling to go? And what are the natives making such a noise over this little transaction in indentured labor for? If it's all as you say, what's this fuss and row about? Keep your rifles steady, lads."

"They want to back out of their bargain, I suppose, now they've drunk our rum and smoked our tobacco," the Frenchman said.

"No true, no true," one of the natives shouted out from beyond in his broken English. "Man a oui-oui!"—that's what they call the French, you know, all through the South Pacific—"man a oui-oui, bad—no believe man, a oui-oui—him make us drunk, so try to cheat us."

WHERE THE FRENCHMEN LANDED. Page 19

"Now, you look here, Monsieur," I said severely, turning to the skipper, "I know what you've been doing. I've seen this little game tried on before. You landed here last night with your peaceable equipment for recruiting labor—we know what that means—a Winchester sixteen-shooter and half a dozen pairs of English handcuffs. You brought on shore your 'trade'—a common clay pipe or two, some cheap red cloth, and a lot of bad French Government tobacco; and you treated the natives all round to free drinks of your square gin. When they'd reached that state of convenient conviviality that they didn't know who they were or what they were doing, you took advantage of their guileless condition. You picked out the likeliest young men and lads, selected any particularly drunken native lying about loose to represent their fathers, made 'em put their marks to a