Once alongside, we took aboard the long hardwood sugar chutes, worn smooth by endless polishing of the gunny sack, in which the partly refined sugar is shipped. These chutes were arranged very cleverly by Nigger who came aboard with a shore gang of stevedores. The inclination must be just right, and the chutes must be placed just so, in order to prevent spilling, where it is necessary to cut corners in order to reach the farther parts of the hold. We were glad that natives were to stow the ship; in fact this work is mighty technical, and we never would have been able to do so with our crew. Working with the natives, we picked up a lot of knowledge about the handling of sugar, points that were to be of much use to me in later years when I returned to the islands as mate of a steamer.
On the Railroad Wharf there were several lines of track and some turnouts carrying short flat cars loaded with sugar bags all safe under huge tarpaulins. We also found the warehouse pretty well stocked with it, and were told that when we once started to load, the sugar would pour into the ship in a constant stream.
That night we again put up our mosquito bars against the enemy from which we had mercifully been saved during the few days in the stream. Tired but strangely content, we sat on the fo'c'sle head in the evening glow or walked out on the stringpiece of the railroad wharf, which then jutted far into the harbor, and watched the lights aboard the U. S. S. _Bennington_. Except Peter, we had made no friends aboard the gunboat. They seemed like men of a different world, as indeed they were. The sounding of "taps" over the water, the clear plaintive notes of the bugle, ended our day. We were to load on the morrow; at last we were to start on the final half of our voyage, with the taking aboard of our first bag of sugar.
Loading a deep water ship with sugar in the port of Honolulu during the golden summer days of the young Republic was a lively business.
"Hi there! On the dock! Bear a hand with that sugar! Shake it up now! Shake it up! Do you think we have a year to load this ship? By ----! I'll shake you up! Yes, me! You lazy black ----!"
"_Pau! Pau! Kaliopoulie! kaue Ki! Ki! O ---- ooo maloue baue Pau. Likee Pau ----! Pau! pau! pau! Oh--ee hakau! pau! pau!_" or words to that effect, according to the phonetic rendering. A violent protest of many tongues, bristling with exclamation points, and heated Kanaka epithets, rose from the indignant dock gang. Glances of the utmost withering scorn were shot up out of the hold at the mate standing abreast of the main hatch, and all over the dock shirts were being slipped back onto the silky brown backs, stripped in readiness for the work to start, The uproar of indignation was spontaneous, and on the outskirts of the racket the stocky Japanese coolies from the sugar plantation gangs, and from the railroad gang, stood around in sullen enjoyment of the situation. Aboard ship we of the crew were circumspect, but our appreciation of the situation was keen.