dead while he was still in the prime of life, and most of them
had been snuffed out by violence. As for his own career, it was
overcast by no such unlucky star, and he passed unscathed through
all the hazards and vicissitudes that could be encountered in
that rugged and heroic era of endeavor. Set adrift in Canton when
the Massachusetts was sold, he promptly turned his hand to
repairing a large Danish ship which had been wrecked by storm,
and he virtually rebuilt her to the great satisfaction of the
owners.

Thence, with money in his pocket, young Delano went to Macao,
where he fell in with Commodore John McClure of the English Navy,
who was in command of an expedition setting out to explore a part
of the South Seas, including the Pelew Islands, New Guinea, New
Holland, and the Spice Islands. The Englishman liked this
resourceful Yankee seaman and did him the honor to say, recalls
Delano, "that he considered I should be a very useful man to him
as a seaman, an officer, or a shipbuilder; and if it was
agreeable to me to go on board the Panther with him, I should
receive the some pay and emoluments with his lieutenants and
astronomers." A signal honor it was at a time when no love was
lost between British and American seafarers who had so recently
fought each other afloat.

And so Amasa Delano embarked as a lieutenant of the Bombay
Marine, to explore tropic harbors and goons until then unmapped
and to parley with dusky kings. Commodore McClure, diplomatic and
humane, had almost no trouble with the untutored islanders,
except on the coast of New Guinea, where the Panther was attacked
by a swarm of canoes and the surgeon was killed. It was a