One Sunday morning I sat on the beach washing my clothes. Three men came up, stopped and gazed at me. They looked me over as though I were beef on the hoof. I have always been big-framed and powerfully muscled, with an arm like iron, and shoulders as wide as a barn door, bulging with sinews. "How old are you, boy?" I replied that I was nearly sixteen. "How would you like to learn boxing?" "Very much," I replied, "because if I knew how to spar, I would be less likely to get a thrashing." They took me to a school of boxing, where I was submitted to another examination. They gave me six pounds sterling and agreed to train me for the prize ring. In return, I was to box for Queensland, exclusively. That began a strenuous time for me. I was put to work with all kinds of gymnastic apparatus to harden my body, particularly chest and stomach, to resist blows. I went through three months of that kind of training before I was allowed to try a boxing pass. Then I practised sparring with an experienced boxer. I was told that, after I had progressed far enough, I would be sent to San Francisco for additional training and would make my debut there as "the Prize Boxer of Queensland." It all looked very rosy. I liked boxing and do to this day. An American craft was in port, the _Golden Shore_ a four-masted schooner plying between Queensland and Honolulu. She was later put on the San Francisco-Vancouver-Honolulu run. They needed hands and offered to take me as an able-bodied seaman at the excellent pay of forty-five dollars a month. From cabin boy to able-bodied seaman in one jump--that was an inducement, by Joe. The usual line of succession is: cabin boy, yeoman, 'prentice seaman, able-bodied seaman. I guess I was made to be a sailor, because that promotion looked bigger than anything else in the world. I quit my boxing and shipped aboard the _Golden Shore_. In Honolulu I came upon a mystery, a fantastic mystery. It sounds unbelievable. I, myself, cannot explain it. Someday I hope to meet someone who can. One of the cabin boys aboard the _Golden Shore_ was a German named Nauke. He was a violin maker by trade who had lost all his money and put to sea. We became fast friends. At Honolulu, Nauke invited me to go ashore with him. He brought along a can of condensed milk, a delicacy he knew I liked. We went sightseeing, and one of the sights was that of royalty. We stood outside of the palace grounds and watched the Hawaiian potentate while he had tea. He sat in a reed chair, and a couple of his wives stood beside him. A well-dressed gentleman who seemed to be on a stroll came up to us and began to talk to us in English. "Don't waste your time on anything like that," he said. "Why not see the hula-hula dance?" Nauke and I said all right, because the hula-hula was just what we did want to see. The gentleman asked whether we had any better clothes to wear, to which we responded that we had not.