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CHAPTER XVI.

CHATS WHILE CRUISING.

THE Belle Frances, of Vallejo, Jackson owner, was a smart fore-and-aft centre-board schooner, with beautiful lines and of about sixty tons register. She was almost as well kept as many a Cowes-built yacht, and could sail remarkably fast. Moreover, she was a good freight-carrier, and was always well in hand, a sailingcraft virtue of the first-class for vessels employed among the coral-reefed islands of the Pacific Sea.

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Her saloon cabin' was small, but well ventilated, and the state-rooms' were naturally bunks of the shelf order; but in my cruises in her we generally slept on deck.

As a rule, Jackson sailed the schooner himself; but there was a half-caste Samoan as first mate, and a fairly numerous crew of Polynesians, who were as full of fun as those Seedi 'boys' one meets with on the P. and O. steamers.

The Belle Frances was in the harbour of Apia, Samoa, and I had just been welcomed aboard by her owner. The blue-peter was flying, and the stars-andstripes spread gaily out to the light morning breeze

from our peak, and we were only waiting for despatches from the consuls on shore, our destination being Kandavu, Fiji, where we hoped to make connections with the 'Frisco mail-boat, and where Jackson intended to ship certain small boxes of valuable pearls and drugs to his business friends in California, New York, and London. In addition we carried a general cargo of copra, bêche-de-mer, pearl-shell, and curios, for ultimate sale at Sydney or Auckland.

The well-built Californian schooner was straining at her cable like a hound in the leash; and at last the documents for Washington and Downing Street having reached us, the anchor was got up, and the white sails filled themselves with the fair wind. Through the brilliantly blue water, just ruffled by the breeze which steadied the star-spangled banner, the Belle Frances cleaved her rapid way, till the wooded and flower-gay shores of beautiful Samoa were being rapidly lost to view; and having in the cabin clinked our glasses (with something in them) as a sort of toast for a speedy run and successful business at our journey's end, Jackson and I went on deck, and soon were at full length on some luxurious rugs which one of the 'boys' had carefully placed for our convenience.

'I suppose,' said my host and skipper, 'that there are people who infinitely prefer the whirr of a factory, or the ticking of a clock in some stuffy office, to the music of this breeze? Well, we were, I guess, all cut out for our several paths-mine's been a strange one; but the people who don't like this sort of thing can't appreciate God's world, and that's a fact. 'Pon my word, I have met men whose first impulse on

seeing one of those exquisite valleys in Upolu, would be to immediately erect a huge blood-manure factory, with a monstrously big chimney-stack, to poison every living thing for miles around. To my mind, this life of mine contains as much real enjoyment as I shall ever have down here; and perhaps, after all, it don't amount to much now. That Lone Mountain cemetery has robbed me of my sunshine; but brain and body are actively employed, it's healthy work, and one's got to live, and fight the battle to the end. Light your pipe.'

Jackson was rarely comfortable unless he was smoking, and he liked his friends to keep him company; so a few minutes later circles of blue smoke from the Virginia Gem, in my well-tried and somewhat burnt briar-root, were affecting, however remotely, the clear atmosphere about us.

'Well,' I replied, 'I am with you all the time as to the glories of existence here. Every rose has its thorn, however, and whatever you say, you can't forget those cockroaches; but what I want particularly to force into people's heads, is that these lovely islands ought to be turned to bigger account than they are. Precious little is known of them, and the only people who seem to appreciate the business at all, are the German firm of Godeffroy.'

'You are always preaching commerce,' was my friend's reply; everlastingly at the same game of dollars and cents; but I believe you are right, after

all.'

'I.know I am. Putting aside religion, which you and I won't quarrel about, there is no greater civiliser

in the world than legitimate commerce, and that means here the organisation of a big business. It is simply impossible to work the trade of Polynesia except on a big scale. You do a good deal; but the right way to send these islands ahead would be a British Godeffroy, with plenty of capital, and honest, fair-dealing men directing the affair.'

'What's the good of dreaming?' was Jackson's comment. 'It is no good talking to English capitalists about Polynesia. If you go to London with some impossible patent, or some silver or gold mine, and put in a flaunting prospectus, a good deal which nobody can understand, and which nobody tries to understand, you'll fetch the pockets of John Bull; but if you state downright facts about this region, and offer to prove them right away, and explain-for most London people think everything must be sold of necessity in Mincing Lane-that the markets for Polynesian produce are at our doors, so to speak, in Australia or New Zealand, they'll tell you to a moral certainty that they are so very much occupied with the distribution of the last dividend of the Honduras Ship Railroad Company, or some such other South American Stock, that you and your islands may go to the deuce. What the British public like is something tangible, my dear Stonehewer-like the Emma Mine. You could not get a nicely-worded telegram every day from Samoa, you know.'

'The only man that I know of who has really grasped the thing, is Julius Vogel, of New Zealand.' 'Be respectful, my friend-Sir Julius, if you please.' 'Well, Sir Julius, if you are so particular; but he

hardly wants a title, for his name will be known long after our tombstones are illegible, and perhaps our names clean forgotten, for what he has done for New Zealand in the matter of railroads and emigration. He has cut his initials very deeply indeed into the growing bark of that very promising sapling. As for his Polynesian scheme, it is worthy of the founders of the East India Company. Did you ever see it?'

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'I think I saw it once, a year or so back, in Auckland,' said Jackson, and it struck me there was too much about New Zealand in it; but I like a man to stick up for his place--you for instance are especially sweet on Fiji.'

'Of course I am, and you would be equally so if you were not so fond of being always in the Marquesas.'

'Perhaps I should; but now that the English have got the place, do they turn its resources to proper account by the introduction of capital? Not a resource, sir.'

'You talk of the English-are you naturalised?'

'Of course I am; there was something about the big-heartedness of Americans that always took my fancy, and as, at one time, I determined to live in America, I concluded to be an American; besides, you know full well that my hopes lay buried, for a time at least, in Californian soil.'

As he uttered these words a shade of his deep sorrow, manfully, patiently endured, passed over the bronzed face.

'You would never care to return to England?'

'No, sir; I am not in love with some of its people, and those people bear my name,' he added.

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