“Bless me eyes,” said the white-whiskered Old-Timer, “it's just sixty-six years since I lay in Apia harbour in Her Majesty's twelve-gun brig Elk.” We had been yarning about Samoa as it was in the days when it was still a No-man's Land, and when three Great Powers were alternately coaxing and bullying the natives, and now and again setting up a short-reign king, and now and again hurling shot and shell into the hapless islanders’ bush villages.

“The old Elk—she was a comfortable little ship if ever there was one. You know, in those days there were hellships in the Royal Navy just as in the merchant marine. They'd flog a man as soon as look at him, in some British men-o'-war. There was the Iris for one, that fine-looking frigate that was out in these waters in the days of the Maori War. The Elk was in these parts at the same time, but how different she was, a little brig of four hundred tons, with a crew of about a hundred and thirty. No flogging in her. She had a captain who didn't believe in it, but he got good discipline for all that.”

This veteran of two services, James Capper, well on towards his nineties told me of the days when he was a carefree barefooted young bluejacket jumping around up in the branches of that little brig-of-war. He had come out to New Zealand before the mast in the ship Rose of Sharon, and after a turn at whaling along the Hawke's Bay coast he signed on in the Elk at Auckland for the term of a cruise; she was going to the South Seas. “This was early in 1859. I served in her for eighteen months. A few months after we left Auckland we were lying in Apia Bay. The hands were busy cleaning and painting the brig and boating off water from one of the beautiful clear mountain streams that ran through the beach town. The Elk was making ready to sail for Sydney, her headquarters on the South Pacific station.

“We were busy getting the ship in order,” said my old sailor friend, “when we saw a whaleboat under sail come in through the reef entrance and make for the beach. The boat, running in before the fine breeze, passed close to the brig. We thought it must be a trader coming in on some urgent job from one of the other islands; perhaps a native war had broken out. Presently a boat came off to us from the shore, with the two consuls, British and American, and they had a conference with our captain and went ashore again. Signals went up recalling our pinnace and cutter, which were bringing off water. A few moments later the bos'n's pipe went shrilling and then the order was bawled, ‘All hands lay aft!'

“We dropped every job we were at and doubled aft, and mustered in front of our Captain, Campion. He was standing on the midship gun grating in the gangway. He said:

”'My lads, I've just received some very important news, and I want you to work as you've never worked before in your lives. It's to save human life. A brig has foundered out there and there are fourteen people adrift on a raft. Now, my lads, we must go out and find them.'

“That was Captain Campion's way. He got us going good and willing straight off. I see him now, in my mind's eye—a burly man, rather stout, clean-shaven except for mutton-chop whiskers, bluff and hearty of manner. He turned to the first lieutenant, Mr. Hume—'Nobby’ Hume we called him, a rather peppery customer and a splendid seaman—and told him to get the ship under way.