When I went in the saloon was fairly full. A group of business men stood together at the bar, discussing affairs, and in a corner two Kanakas were drinking. Two or three men who might have been store-keepers were shaking dice. The rest of the company plainly followed the sea; they were captains of tramps, first mates, and engineers. Behind the bar, busily making the Honolulu cocktail for which the place was famous, served two large half-castes, in white, fat, clean-shaven and dark skinned, with thick, curly hair and large bright eyes. Winter seemed to know more than half the company, and when we made our way to the bar a little fat man in spectacles, who was standing by himself, offered him a drink. "No, you have one with me, Captain," said Winter. He turned to me. "I want you to know Captain Butler." The little man shook hands with me. We began to talk, but, my attention distracted by my surroundings, I took small notice of him, and after we had each ordered a cocktail we separated. When we had got into the motor again and were driving away, Winter said to me: "I'm glad we ran up against Butler. I wanted you to meet him. What did you think of him?" "I don't know that I thought very much of him at all," I answered. "Do you believe in the supernatural?" "I don't exactly know that I do," I smiled. "A very queer thing happened to him a year or two ago. You ought to have him tell you about it." "What sort of thing?" Winter did not answer my question. "I have no explanation of it myself," he said. "But there's no doubt about the facts. Are you interested in things like that?" "Things like what?" "Spells and magic and all that." "I've never met anyone who wasn't." Winter paused for a moment. "I guess I won't tell you myself. You ought to hear it from his own lips so that you can judge. How are you fixed up for to-night?" "I've got nothing on at all." "Well, I'll get hold of him between now and then and see if we can't go down to his ship." Winter told me something about him. Captain Butler had spent all his life on the Pacific. He had been in much better circumstances than he was now, for he had been first officer and then captain of a passenger-boat plying along the coast of California, but he had lost his ship and a number of passengers had been drowned. "Drink, I guess," said Winter. Of course there had been an enquiry, which had cost him his certificate, and then he drifted further afield. For some years he had knocked about the South Seas, but he was now in command of a small schooner which sailed between Honolulu and the various islands of the group. It belonged to a Chinese to whom the fact that his skipper had no certificate meant only that he could be had for lower wages, and to have a white man in charge was always an advantage.