The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-07-12

said Honolulu man, as he eazed a,
the d1smasted bark st James, land see
ing her somehow reminds me of the
brig L'Avenir, Captain Jameson
which came limping into Honolulu
some seven or eight years ago. The
st. James is three-masted. and the
l. Avenir had but two sticks as befits
a brig; the st. James is also clean
and the L'Avenir was awfully dirty,
but both We're in distress. and botn
came from Australia, and that is the
reason, poor as it is, why l have a
story to tell
| The LAvenir was coal-laden and
had been blown out of her course until
she rounded UP off Laysan Island.
| where Governor Freeth had a small
settlement, headquarters of the guano
! industry. F'reeth was away at the
| time and had left a man, all soul alone,
in charge of the plant. The L'Avenir
was nearly out of provisions: she had
| nothing much in the locker but raw
coal, and while one could MUNICH on
that, it was bad for the teeth Cap
storehouse, and noting plenty of nest
ing birds and basking turtles ashore.
concluded that he had found a treasure
trove. So he cleared a boat away and
started for a small lagoon 1t struck
him as queer that no one showed up
The storehouse door was wide open;
SO was the door of the cottage, but
not human being was in sight AS
the boat neared the beach, Jameson
saw dead chickens lying about What
had happened? Perhaps murder had
been done
The captain and his men carried
arms and, holding them in readiness
as they landed. they started towards
the house. AS they neared it they saw
the figure of a man in a steamer chair,
and a closer look showed that the man
was dead-as it turned out, three
weeks dead. Well, it was a trying
quarter of an hour for Jameson, as his
men refused to handle the body, and
he had to bury it himself, which he
did after a fashion, in the sand of the
front yard, where his crew had aug a
deep grave. This disagreeable task
over, Jameson looked about for pro-
visions. In the room where the dead
man had sat so long gazing at the
sea with SightlesS eyes was a barrel
of picked pork, with the head knocked
in. That was the only pork on the
place and the captain wanted 1t. So
the men carried the food aboard,
brought some other things from the
storehouse. caught turtles and gather
ed gooney eggs, and then the LAvenir,
her people spared from starvation,
squared away for Honolulu.
She was here a long time, unable to
get off on the way to San Francisco.
There was bottomry bond to be ar
ranged, also a little matter of differ
ence between Skipper Jameson and his
first mate. court of inquiry, headed
by the captain of H. M. s. Champion,
was about to sit on Jameson's case,
and the old man was getting up Dutch
courage to meet it. The LAvenir's
skipper came down to Sans Souci where
Sir Henry Bristow and / were then
living and, taking fancy to us, invit-
ed both to dine with him aboard the
next noon, in honor of the queens
birthday Not knowing the LAvenlr
then we dressed in our best duck and
went, being hailed by the skipper In
thick though stentorian accents When
we showed up on the dock. Getting
aboard we found ourselves in seven
by-ten cabin, the table of which took
up nearly all the room, except the
passageway, space for a trunk used to
seat two people, and chair where the
host was wont to disport h1msel1 You
should have seen the table cloth. IL
was the same one jameson had lett
Australia with, and it had never beSn
washed. Soup. thick onion soup, nau
n
on the surface; coal dust had peen
rubbed in; the legs and wings OF COCK
reaches were held like flies IN amber
here and there on the yellow, waxy
plat. Bristow and / We're just in time
and the captain put US on the Trunk
seating himself in the chair ana par
ring our egress. We sat down In coal
dust and arose in wrath, but 1t dld no
good We were there TO stay.
Cook, you bloody bloke, where are
you?' shouted the skipper; bring on
that soup you wall-eyed son or WarI
hog: bring il on, l say, whereupon d
furtiye looking Malta negro sided IN
with a big chinaware washbowl 1ui
of onion gravy which the captain, IN
some unaccountable way managed 10
knock over. Three-euarts of the vel
low stuff ran our way The table had
been showed up tight, and we could not
escape. Down dropped the nasty urea
Gle on our white duck trousers ana
ran comfortably into our low SHOES: 1t
was a trying moment. Dut the host
looked pleasant, and as he was In the
way of our getting out there was noth-
ing to do but look pleasant also. but
from the waist down we each resem-
bled the bear that slipped down mol
low tree into three feet of honey
Bring them ducks!' was the next
order from the quarter deck. 1t came
the scared cook with two hens which
he had roasted to a crisp. 1t was the
Queens birthday, and l thought OF a
Fourth of July feast where they hao
cold roast eagle on the sideboaTd. one
needed rip saw and ME 10 40 any
thing with those hens. The SKIPPER,
who had been mixing beer with pranoy
still thought they were ducks, anu
could not see why they did not ylelo
to his table knife and fork Here
nigger,' he yelled, bring me that liver liver
twister l was chasing the .frst ma
with The cook, more frightened than
ever, produced a dreadful Malay KITS
and fiourishing this the captain GU
x;.ar--y III.