‘Much obliged, Captain! We have met before. I saw you in the Bay of Islands in 18—. You were there when the crew of the _Jonathan Stubbs_ mutinied, and threw the captain overboard.’
‘That is so, and we helped to arrest the darned villains, and send them to Sydney for trial, where they were hanged in due form.’
‘Captain Hayston,’ said Carteret, ‘suppose we get to business. I’ve heard many things about you, but I’m aware that you’re a man of your word.’ Hayston nodded. ‘I place the fullest confidence in your discretion. The affair, which I depend on your help to carry out, is, I am aware, of delicate, not to say dangerous nature. I wish to get away a friend of mine who is detained at Molokai.’
‘It’s against island law—means fine and imprisonment on conviction. The damned place is closely watched. But it means yanking a soul out of hell, and I’ll risk it, if we agree.’
‘I must have a thousand pounds. Five hundred down, and the balance when I land your friend at Norfolk Island. He can get a ship to any port in Australia after that.’
‘Agreed! You shall have a draft on my Sydney agents, Towns and Co., to-night; I can find an endorser here, before we leave, for the second payment, which I shall have great pleasure in making.’
‘That’s the way I like to do business,’ said Hayston, ‘but if you’ll give me the pleasure of your company to dinner this evening, on board the _Leonora_, we can talk everything fully over, and fix up the best way to carry this matter out.’
‘The arrangement will suit me very well. We shall be quite private, I know; and there is much to be said and settled before the start.’
After making the round of the chief places of business in the town, and posting letters of more or less importance, Carteret walked down to the beach with Hayston, and was pulled out to the _Leonora_, graceful craft that she was! They were received at the gangway in true man-o’-war fashion, and as the Captain glanced round, with the quick, trained eye of the seaman born to command, Carteret noted that every man was at his place, and the vessel, generally, in exquisite order. The crew, with few exceptions, were islanders, some were half-castes, a few negroes, but all a muscular, daring, resolute lot—the discipline had evidently been strict and unrelaxing.