I glanced toward the pier. The policemen, with a crowd at their backs, were dashing for me along shore. I started for the cane fields, but in my wet and heavy clothes I stumbled along as if there was lead in my shoes. Perhaps I ran a quarter of a mile. My pursuers gained on me steadily. I was drawing near a cane field, in which I felt I should be able to lose myself; but before reaching it, my pursuers sprang upon me and bore me to the ground. Then, with a policeman on either side of me, I was marched back to the brig's boat. The populace had turned out royally in my honor and I passed through a lane of brown humanity that bent round eyes upon me and chortled and spluttered Kanaka and seemed to get a huge amount of enjoyment out of my capture. As my captors paraded me onto the pier, who should be there waiting for me but Captain Shorey, our new skipper, just arrived from San Francisco by steamer. He stood with feet wide apart and arms folded on his breast and looked at me steadily with stern, cold eyes. In my wet clothes I cut a sorry figure. I felt ashamed of myself and realized that this introduction to my new captain was not all it should have been. Captain Winchester had nothing to say to Richard and me on the long pull back to the brig. Once aboard, he drew a pint of Jamaica rum from his pocket and gave every man of the boat's crew, except us, a swig. But no penalty of any sort was imposed upon us for our escapade. This surprised us. CHAPTER VIII GABRIEL'S LITTLE DRAMA On a bright, sunshiny morning a few days later, with a light breeze just ruffling the harbor, the brig with her sails laid back and her head pointed seaward was drifting with the ebb tide perhaps a mile and a quarter off shore between Honolulu and Diamond Head. Captain Winchester had set out for the city in a whale boat. Those of the sailors left aboard were idling forward. Mr. Landers, the mate, sat by the skylight on the poop, reading a magazine. Second Mate Gabriel and the cooper were busy at the cooper's bench in the waist. No one else was on deck and I resolved to attempt again to escape. The situation seemed made to order. In the warm weather of the tropics, I had often seen old man Landers, when there was nothing doing on deck, sit and read by the hour without ever looking up. I hoped that this morning his magazine would prove of absorbing interest. Gabriel and the cooper were intent upon their work. As for the sailors, I told them I was going to try to swim ashore and if I were discovered and they had to lower for me, I asked them to hurry as little as possible so I might have every chance to get away.