There came in my head what I had been told the day before at dinner, of a cavern above in the bowels of the volcano, a place only to be visited with the light of torches, a treasure-house of the bones of priests and warriors, and clamorous with the voice of an unseen river pouring seaward through the crannies of the mountain.  At the thought, it was revealed to me suddenly, how the bungalows, and the Fowlers, and the bright busy town and crowding ships, were all children of yesterday; and for centuries before, the obscure life of the natives, with its glories and ambitions, its joys and crimes and agonies, had rolled unseen, like the mountain river, in that sea-girt place.  Not Chaldea appeared more ancient, nor the Pyramids of Egypt more abstruse; and I heard time measured by “the drums and tramplings” of immemorial conquests, and saw myself the creature of an hour.  Over the bankruptcy of Pinkerton and Dodd, of Montana Block, S. F., and the conscientious troubles of the junior partner, the spirit of eternity was seen to smile.

To this mood of philosophic sadness, my excesses of the night before no doubt contributed; for more things than virtue are at times their own reward:  but I was greatly healed at least of my distresses.  And while I was yet enjoying my abstracted humour, a turn of the beach brought me in view of the signal-station, with its watch-house and flag-staff, perched on the immediate margin of a cliff.  The house was new and clean and bald, and stood naked to the Trades.  The wind beat about it in loud squalls; the seaward windows rattled without mercy; the breach of the surf below contributed its increment of noise; and the fall of my foot in the narrow verandah passed unheard by those within.

There were two on whom I thus entered unexpectedly:  the look-out man, with grizzled beard, keen seaman’s eyes, and that brand on his countenance that comes of solitary living; and a visitor, an oldish, oratorical fellow, in the smart tropical array of the British man-o’-war’s man, perched on a table, and smoking a cigar.  I was made pleasantly welcome, and was soon listening with amusement to the sea-lawyer.

“No, if I hadn’t have been born an Englishman,” was one of his sentiments, “damn me!  I’d rather ’a been born a Frenchy!  I’d like to see another nation fit to black their boots.”  Presently after, he developed his views on home politics with similar trenchancy.  “I’d rather be a brute beast than what I’d be a liberal,” he said.  “Carrying banners and that! a pig’s got more sense.  Why, look at our chief engineer—­they do say he carried a banner with his own ’ands:  ‘Hooroar for Gladstone!’ I suppose, or ‘Down with the Aristocracy!’ What ’arm does the aristocracy do?  Show me a country any good without one!  Not the States; why, it’s the ’ome of corruption!  I knew a man—­he was a good man, ’ome born—­who was signal quartermaster in the Wyandotte.  He told me he could never have got there if he hadn’t have ’run with the boys’—­told it me as I’m telling you.  Now, we’re all British subjects here——­” he was going on.