Rosser was on deck, and told me that we were “going to get it hot from the N.E. before long;” and by four in the morning we were under topsails and lower courses only, the ship flying before a most unpleasant sea. I turned in again, and slept till daylight, when the second mate gave me a call.

“Come on deck and see something pretty.”

The “something pretty” was the brigantine, which was in sight about a mile away on our lee bow. She was in a terrible mess. Her fore and main royal masts and topgallant masts and jibboom had apparently all been carried away together, and she was almost lying on her beam ends. We ran down to her, and saw that her crew were busy in cutting away the spars and sails alongside. All her boats were gone, and her for’ard deck house had started, and was working to and fro with every sea.

In less than half an hour the mate and six hands from the barque were on board, assisting the crew, cutting away the wire rigging and trimming the cargo, the shifting of which had nearly sent her to the bottom. I went with the boat to lend a hand, and the second mate of the brigantine told me that the young captain had refused to listen to the mate’s suggestion to shorten sail, when the officer told him that the wind would certainly come away suddenly from the N.E. The consequence was that a furious squall took her aback, and had not the jibboom—and then the upper spars—carried away under the terrific strain, she would have gone to the bottom. The worst part of the business was that two poor seamen had been lost overboard.

“He’s a pretty kind of man for a skipper if you like,” said the second officer bitterly. “He ought to be hanged for pretending he’s a sailorman. It’s sheer murder to put such a jackass in command of a deep-water sailing ship.”

After rendering all possible assistance to the brigantine, we left her about mid-day; and had been lying at anchor for two weeks in Nukualofa Harbour before she put in an appearance outside the reef. A native pilot went out in a canoe, but the captain haughtily declined his services, and would not even let him come on board—he wanted to show people that although he had never seen Naknalofa Harbour before, he could bring his ship in without a pilot. In less than half an hour, a swirling eddy caught the vessel, and earned her broadside on to the reef, where she would have been battered to pieces, had not our two boats gone to her assistance, and with great difficulty got her off again. Captain Rosser several times countermanded orders given by his chief officer—an experienced seaman—and bullied and “jawed” his crew in the most pompous and irritating manner, and finally when we succeeded in getting the vessel off the reef with the loss of her false keel and rudder, and were towing her into smooth water inside the reef, he came for’ard, and abruptly desired our chief mate to cease towing, as he meant to anchor.

“Anchor, and be hanged to you,” replied our officer with angry contempt; “the kind of ship you ought to command is one that is towed by a horse along a path in the old country.”

We cast off and left him to his own conceit and devices. He let go in less than five fathoms, paid out too much cable, and went stern first on to a coral patch, where he stuck for a couple of days, much to our delight.

Within six months this gentleman succeeded in getting the brigantine ashore on four occasions, and she had to return to Sydney to be repaired at a cost of £1,700.

My next two experiences were with the pig-headed type. I had made an agreement with the master of a Fiji-owned vessel—also a brigantine—to convey myself and my stock of trade goods from an island in the Tokelau or Union Group (South Pacific) to Yap, in the Caroline Islands in the North-west, where I intended starting a trading business. This captain was as good a seaman as ever trod a deck, and had had a rather long experience of the island trade, but a mule could not surpass him in obstinacy, as I was soon to learn, to my sorrow.

A week after leaving the Tokelaus, we dropped anchor on the edge of the reef of one of the Gilbert Group, to land supplies for a trader living there. The coast was very exposed to all but an easterly wind, and neither the mate nor myself liked the idea of anchoring at all. The skipper, however, brought his vessel close in to the roaring breakers on the reef, let go his anchor in six fathoms, and then neatly backed astern into blue water sixty fathoms deep. Here we lay apparently safe enough, for the time, the wind being easterly and steady.

By sunset we had finished landing stores and shipping cargo, and when the captain came off in the last boat, we naturally expected him to heave up and get out of such a dangerous place, but to our surprise he remarked carelessly that as the men were very tired, he would hold on until daylight.

“I wouldn’t risk it if I were you,” said the trader, who had come aboard in his own boat to “square up.” “You can’t depend on this easterly breeze holding all night, and it may come on squally from the west or south-west in a few hours, and take you unawares.”

“Bosh!” was the reply. “Hoist the boats up, Mr. Laird, and tell the men to get supper.”

“Very well, sir,” replied the mate, none too cheerfully.

Just as the trader was going ashore, he said to me aside, quietly, “This little monkey-faced skipper is a blazing idiot” (our captain was a very, very little man). “I told him again just now, that if the wind comes away from west or south-west, or even if it falls calm, he’ll find he’s caught, to a dead certainty. But he as good as told me to mind my own business.”