I felt a strong
affection for him, and preferred him to any of my own countrymen
there; and I believe there was nothing which he would not have
done for me. When I came into the oven he looked at me, held out
his hand, and said, in a low voice, but with a delightful smile,
``Aloha, Aikane! Aloha nui!'' I comforted him as well as I could,
and promised to ask the captain to help him from the
medicine-chest, and told him I had no doubt the captain would do
what he could for him, as he had worked in our employ for several
years, both on shore and aboard our vessels on the coast. I went
aboard and turned into my hammock, but I could not sleep.
Thinking, from my education, that I must have some knowledge of
medicine, the Kanakas had insisted upon my examining him
carefully; and it was not a sight to be forgotten. One of our
crew, an old man-of-war's-man of twenty years' standing, who had
seen sin and suffering in every shape, and whom I afterwards took
to see Hope, said it was dreadfully worse than anything he had
ever seen, or even dreamed of. He was horror-struck, as his
countenance showed; yet he had been among the worst cases in our
naval hospitals. I could not get the thought of the poor fellow
out of my head all night,-- his dreadful suffering, and his
apparently inevitable horrible end.
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