When the ship was at the end of her discharging, and my trials with the mate had come to a close, so far as the bilge was concerned at least, Frenchy suggested that we have a dinner ashore. I felt like celebrating and readily agreed. At first we thought of having this feast alone, but after due deliberation, and consideration of all of the questions involved, we decided to invite a third shipmate. Frenchy figured this out on the basis of the size of the bird that he held to be the necessary central feature of the proposed banquet. The kind of a bird Frenchy had in mind was a three-man bird--indeed many a family of twice that number would have considered it sufficient. Then again, in his way the Frenchman was quite a philosopher, and realized that in a three-cornered celebration the whole affair would take on a better air. Three may be a crowd under certain circumstances, but where shipmates get together, three of them generally manage to have a better time than when they travel in pairs. Now as to the third man. I suspected that Frenchy had already selected him when we went out on the fo'c'sle head to talk the matter over, a few nights before the event was to come off. He urged me to suggest candidates. I did, possibly more on their merits as sailors than anything else, forgetting that the man who knows best how to stow a fore t'gan'sl may not be the handiest shipmate with a knife and fork. Hitchen or Axel were named by me. "No, Felix, that Hitchen always laughs at me when I tell about the way we cook things in France. Axel is all right but he eats stock fish. Let us ask Tommy. Tommy knows a good dinner when he smells it. Let's ask him." Thereupon Tommy was asked, and of course accepted. We were to pool our week's allowance, two dollars apiece, and by the ready way in which Tommy and Frenchy got together on the proposition I knew that they had already thrashed out all the details. Frenchy merely started the ball rolling my way by true fo'c'sle diplomacy, the boys imagining perhaps that I would want someone besides Tommy as the third man, for somehow or other Tommy and I had never chummed to any extent since our arrival in Honolulu. The matter of Tommy disposed of, Frenchy took the arrangements in hand, going ashore with Tommy Saturday night to perfect the details, for these archconspirators had already selected the place at which we were to dine. It transpired that Nigger, who was a warm friend of mine host, had highly recommended the place, so I agreed to put myself in the hands of my friends after the time-honored custom of more exalted candidates, turning over to them the two silver dollars received from Captain Nichols, and that night I followed my routine of many other evenings of enforced economy, and repaired to the reading room of the Y. M. C. A.