With what little change we had left, we laid in a few stores for the voyage home, a few bunches of bananas, odds and ends of clothing, and the like. I purchased a pair of mittens, after a search in that tropic city, as mine had worn out in hauling at the gear. The most startling addition to our life forward was a green parrot that Frenchy brought aboard, having swapped him at the Union saloon for a small brig, rigged in a bay rum bottle. This brig had been a long time making, and Frenchy only let go of it when he was assured of a prize. The bird, hailing from God knows where, as I don't believe they are native to the islands, was to be a present to his sister Madeleine. Frenchy named him Jaques, at once vulgarized to common Jake, and he was hung in his wooden cage under the fo'c'sle head. Just before hauling into the stream, Captain Nichols shipped three Kanakas to take the places left vacant by Mr. Stoddard, Jimmy, and Joe. This made it certain that someone from the crew would be taken aft as second mate. The Kanakas were a rare assortment. Kahemuku, a lanky, poetical looking fellow with long hair and dreamy eyes, hailed from Tahiti. The two others, both of them short and somewhat stout, were from Honolulu and should have known better than to ship around the Horn. John Aahee was assigned to the starboard watch; he was clean shaven and dull, a poor devil who merely existed after we got to sea. Black Joe, so the mate called him, since his name was beyond ordinary understanding, was fully whiskered with a bunch of fuzz that looked like the stuffing of an old hair mattress. Joe had a peculiar idea about the relation between officers and men, and never could get this straightened out. Black Joe and Kahemuku were assigned to the port watch to take the place of Jimmy and Joe. Some of the men thought that I would be called aft as second mate. Ambitious as I was for preferment, I realized that the billet would be about the worst thing that could happen to me. Whatever the captain may have thought about it, the mate was against me, as we remained at loggerheads while I visited with my "dude friends," which I did at intervals as long as we were in port. Old Smith was the logical candidate for the job, and the mate wanted him. Others were like Barkis, but the strange part was that the real sailors in the crew, the men who knew enough to stand a watch at sea and work the ship, were the most anxious to side step the honor.