row of houses, each with a bit of garden, and all (I have to presume) inhabited.  Thither I used to mount by a crumbling footpath, and in front of the last of the houses, would sit down to sketch.  The very first day I saw I was observed, out of the ground-floor window by a youngish, good-looking fellow, prematurely bald, and with an expression both lively and engaging.  The second, as we were still the only figures in the landscape, it was no more than natural that we should nod.  The third, he came out fairly from his intrenchments, praised my sketch, and with the impromptu cordiality of artists carried me into his apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a museum of strange objects,—­paddles and battle-clubs and baskets, rough-hewn stone images, ornaments of threaded shell, cocoanut bowls, snowy cocoanut plumes—­evidences and examples of another earth, another climate, another race, and another (if a ruder) culture.  Nor did these objects lack a fitting commentary in the conversation of my new acquaintance.  Doubtless you have read his book.  You know already how he tramped and starved, and had so fine a profit of living, in his days among the islands; and meeting him, as I did, one artist with another, after months of offices and picnics, you can imagine with what charm he would speak, and with what pleasure I would hear.  It was in such talks, which we were both eager to repeat, that I first heard the names—­first fell under the spell—­of the islands; and it was from one of the first of them that I returned (a happy man) with Omoo under one arm, and my friend’s own adventures under the other.

The second incident was more dramatic, and had, besides, a bearing on my future.  I was standing, one day, near a boat-landing under Telegraph Hill.  A large barque, perhaps of eighteen hundred tons, was coming more than usually close about the point to reach her moorings; and I was observing her with languid inattention, when I observed two men to stride across the bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently dispossessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing where I stood.  In a surprisingly short time they came tearing up the steps; and I could see that both were too well dressed to be foremast hands—­the first even with research, and both, and specially the first, appeared under the empire of some strong emotion.

“Nearest police office!” cried the leader.

“This way,” said I, immediately falling in with their precipitate pace.  “What’s wrong?  What ship is that?”

“That’s the Gleaner,” he replied.  “I am chief officer, this gentleman’s third; and we’ve to get in our depositions before the crew.  You see they might corral us with the captain; and that’s no kind of berth for me.  I’ve sailed with some hard cases in my time, and seen pins flying like sand on a squally day—­but never a match to our old man.  It never let up from the Hook to the Farallones; and the last man was dropped not sixteen hours ago.  Packet rats our men were, and as tough a crowd as ever sand-bagged a man’s head in; but they looked sick enough when the captain started in with his fancy shooting.”