Frenchy too had great plans. He was going back to Dunkirk. To be sure he even talked of going back to Havre, in the French Line, paying his steerage passage. Then he planned to get spliced, and his scheme was to go out in the fishing fleet, or else back to New Caledonia, where he knew the country, and start life afresh. Axel was going back to Sweden, to Stockholm, so he said, and never more out on the briny billows of discontent. Fred was also a prospective homeward bounder. Trondhjem was his destination, and the fishing fleets of the town the means for his living. Tony and Charlie Horse intended to join Scouse in so far as they were bound for the interior of the U. S. A. During these many discussions, the wise sailor-men like Hitchen, Brenden, and Smith, the seasoned shellbacks, full of the cruel furrows of time spent before the mast, and God alone knows what other outlandish callings that roving men may follow, kept their counsel and smiled. "Sonny, I guess I am down on the books of some ship that sails a few weeks after we get back. Another crowd, another skipper and mates, and another voyage." Old Smith was as nearly sentimental as it was possible for him to be, and still be Old Smith. "Yes, I like this ship, but how in hell are we all going to sign on again when more than half the crowd is going to get married?" It was strange how thoughtful the hard days of hauling that chain made all of us. Besides this, the Honolulu climate was gradually getting under our hardened hides. They can say what they like about the Hawaiian Islands being a "white man's country." It is if you mean a white man who never has anything harder to do than to tell a Kanaka or a Jap to lift the burden. The trades do blow, and it is lucky for the inhabitants that they do, otherwise, the Isthmus of Panama would be duplicated out in the broad Pacific. In spite of the pleasing winds and the beautiful clear weather, things are a bit too balmy for continued physical exertion. Lifting a gin rickey is good enough exercise, and if you lift them often enough, out at Sans Souci, for instance, you can imagine anything you like about the Islands. Working men stay home, if you are white, let the coolies shoulder the physical burdens; but if you are wealthy and also lucky, you will very likely own stock in a sugar plantation. They were paying seventy-five per cent dividends in those days, and this is so even now, I believe. Also if one is ambitious to put pep and fire into things, seek a cooler clime. It is a fact that the white people of the Islands, who can do so, spend a part of their time on the coast and whenever possible, prospective mothers go to the coast during the time of their pregnancy, as the Hawaiian climate seems to rob them of much of the necessary vitality for the ordeal of birth.