We were bound to make a call at Vau Vau, in any case, to discharge our Kanakas shipped at Honolulu, although I fervently hoped to be able to keep my brave harpooner Samuela.  So when I heard of our destination, I sounded him cautiously as to his wishes in the matter, finding that, while he was both pleased with and proud of his position on board, he was longing greatly for his own orange grove and the embraces of a certain tender “fafine” that he averred was there awaiting him.  With such excellent reasons for his leaving us, I could but forbear to persuade him, sympathizing with him too deeply to wish him away from such joys as he described to me.

So we bade farewell to the line grounds, and commenced another stretch to the south, another milestone, as it were, on the long road home.  Prosaic and uneventful to the last degree was our passage, the only incident worth recording being our “gamming” of the Passamaquoddy, of Martha’s Vineyard, South Sea whaler; eighteen months out, with one thousand barrels of sperm oil on board.  We felt quite veterans alongside of her crew, and our yarns laid over theirs to such an extent that they were quite disgusted at their lack of experience.  Some of them had known our late skipper, but none of them had a good word for him, the old maxim, “Speak nothing but good of the dead,” being most flagrantly set at nought.  One of her crew was a Whitechapelian, who had been roving about the world for a good many years.

Amongst other experiences, he had, after “jumping the bounty” two or three times, found himself a sergeant in the Federal Army before Gettysburg.  During that most bloody battle, he informed me that a “Reb” drew a bead on him at about a dozen yards’ distance, and fired, He said he felt just as if somebody had punched him in the chest, and knocked him flat on his back on top of a sharp stone—­no pain at all, nor any further recollection of what had happened, until he found himself at the base, in hospital.  When the surgeons came to examine him for the bullet, they found that it had struck the broad brass plate of his cross-belt fairly in the middle, penetrating it and shattering his breast bone.  But after torturing him vilely with the probe, they were about to give up the search in despair, when he told them he felt a pain in his back.  Examining the spot indicated by him, they found a bullet just beneath the skin, which a touch with the knife allowed to tumble out.  Further examination revealed the strange fact that the bullet, after striking his breast-bone, had glanced aside and travelled round his body just beneath the skin, without doing him any further harm.  In proof of his story, he showed me the two scars and the perforated buckle-plate.