The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-03-21
The Drifters
By Clarence L. Cullen.

In Honolulu I knew a one-eyed ship
ping clerk. He. hailed from Utica, New
York. He was huge, iron muscled,
bronzed; even, with an absent eye,
handsome; quiet man, and abstemious.
He was head shipping clerk for Ha-
wall s Inter-Island line of steamers.
His pay was two hundred dollars a
month. He had held his job for little
over year, and was highly regarded
by his employers.
One drowsy afternoon I came upon
him, with his white pantalooned legs
cooked up on an inky table desk, in his
shirt sleeves as usual, wreath of
fresh plucked blossoms encircling his
pushed back Panama hat. He was
smoking a black American made cigar
and gazing refectively through the
hyaline air upon a patch of whipping
indigo sea framed by his office window.
Even the waterfront air was thick with
the fragrance of frangipani flowers.
Somewhere back of the dock Office
could be heard the chirpy, cheerful talk
of partly nude, superbly chiseled kama
ka longshoreman. The always open
office door let out on busy street; a
street, nevertheless, that showed here
and there the featherlike tracery of
silhouetted palms. The dock zephyrs
were as soft as wool. The days work
was about over. 1t was a peaceful
hour, a scene on which to inger.
The shipping clerk emerged from his
trance and nodded as I entered his Of
fee "Well,' said he, "I'm on my
way
H'Whatl' I broke out. "Quitting
Honolulu
"Uh-huh, - said he laconically. "Off
on the next steamer south.
"Where to now?'
"Ceylon; got timekeeper's job at
the pearl fisheries there"
'tBut / thought you were crazy over
Honolulu?o
$50 | am. Dandy town. Greatest
climate on earth. Fine folks. Pretty
good job I've got here, too"
s'Well, then, in the name of the
Original Hobo, whoever he might have
been, what are you going away fora''
The shipping clerk glanced up at me
with some surprise out of his one eye.
sfWhy, Great Scott, mani he ex-
claimed, ssdon It you know that I've
been sticking around here for more
than a yeare''
s'Sure. What of it,"
Again that glance of surprise out of
enough to stay in any mans town."
| he asked me; thoroughly meaning 1T,
| too.
rr1 ..,,,4 a,r opS,rar RI that r
knew; no answer at any rate, that my
/. ene-eyed friend would have understood.
For he was Drifter.
From Utica to Ceylon.
I He had been drifting for twenty
years. His first jump from his pent
M Utica had been to San Francisco.
Alaska, next,-cheeking up seal peits
at Sitka,-had been too raw and drear
for him. Manzanillo, Mexico, was
| warmer and SUMMER, of course; he
checked up coffee shipments there for
| a year or so. Thence he went a
schoonering as cargo keeper of vessel
that traded among the islands-Samoa,
Tahiti, the Fiiis, the Marquesas, the
| Carolines-for cochineal. cepra, and the
| like. Next he went nitrating and phos-
mating in Chile and Peru. In Val
| paraiso he remained for two whole
wears, and he spoke of this regretfully,
manifestlv considering the extra year
/ TO have been lamentable waste OF
| time. He reached La Libertad. Sal
yador in time to take hand IN the
Ezeta revolution; it was in this fighting
that he had lost his eye. Thence to
Australia. where he followed the gold
lexcitments until the landloeked desert
| places wearied him. From Australia to
| Honolulu. where I knew him and found
| him likable.
He went to the pearl fisheries OF oey-
Ion on the next steamer, and l have not
seen him since. IF alive, no doubt he
is still drifting.
Refute an Old Proverb.
His itinerary, as I have given it
perhaps forgetfully leaving out an ex-
| cursion or SOS characteristic or the