same ships with me; and together we ranged the Pacific from Hawaii to
Sydney Head, and from Torres Straits to the Galapagos. We blackbirded
from the New Hebrides and the Line Islands over to the westward clear
through the Louisades, New Britain, New Ireland, and New Hanover. We
were wrecked three times--in the Gilberts, in the Santa Cruz group,
and in the Fijis. And we traded and salved wherever a dollar promised
in the way of pearl and pearl shell, copra, beche-de-mer, hawkbill
turtle shell, and stranded wrecks.

It began in Papeete, immediately after his announcement that he was
going with me over all the sea, and the islands in the midst thereof.
There was a club in those days in Papeete, where the pearlers,
traders, captains, and riffraff of South Sea adventurers forgathered.
The play ran high, and the drink ran high; and I am very much afraid
that I kept later hours than were becoming or proper. No matter what
the hour was when I left the club, there was Otoo waiting to see me
safely home.

At first I smiled; next I chided him. Then I told him flatly that I
stood in need of no wet-nursing. After that I did not see him when I
came out of the club. Quite by accident, a week or so later, I
discovered that he still saw me home, lurking across the street among
the shadows of the mango trees. What could I do? I know what I did do.

Insensibly I began to keep better hours. On wet and stormy nights, in
the thick of the folly and the fun, the thought would persist in
coming to me of Otoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping
mangoes. Truly, he made a better man of me. Yet he was not
strait-laced. And he knew nothing of common Christian morality. All
the people on Bora Bora were Christians; but he was a heathen, the