The island steamer, a typical product of Hawaii, is a cross between a steam schooner, only shorter, and a New England boarding house and factory combination. A black tin smokestack rises above the front porch, two stump masts are fitted with leg-of-mutton sails to steady her, and a large crew of Kanakas complete the maritime mess.
News that war with Spain had been declared reached us on April 27th, coming by the U. S. _Mariposa_ from Sydney. On the same day we discharged the last piece of cargo in the hold of the _Fuller_ and hauled into the stream to get ready for our return loading of sugar. This ended our shore liberty for a few nights, but it really came as a relief to us. Three busy weeks along shore, weeks that seemed like months when we thought of all that had happened, sickened us of the dust and smell, the latter emanating largely from the Chinese houses with their peculiar odor of rancid sweetened grease. The chatter of the Kanakas wearied us and the mosquito pest along shore was enough to discourage even the most pronounced optimist. We were glad, indeed, for a few days of comparative quiet while in the stream; at least it was three days of quiet that we looked forward to.
Before hauling away from the wharf we took aboard a lot of rough pine and spruce lumber, material to be used in lining the ship. Shore carpenters came out, men thoroughly versed in the work, and in an incredible time had fitted a complete inner skin throughout the hold. This was kept at least a foot away from the sides of the vessel and some two feet above the bilges, and the ceiling next the keelson, the ceiling being at the bottom and not at the top of the hold, as landsmen might imagine. The boarding of this inner skin was cleverly laid, clinker fashion, like the clapboards on a house, so that any sweat or leak water in the hold would be shed and run down clear to the bilges without wetting the precious cargo.
A cargo of sugar such as was to be carried by the _Fuller_ was worth at that time in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million, and the greatest precautions were taken to safeguard it. In addition to guarding against wet, all places where the sugar bags might, by any chance, come in contact with iron, as the bolt heads in the heavy knees that jutted through the inner lining, were wrapped with extra thicknesses of gunny sack. When this job was completed the lower hold looked like the inside of a gigantic melon, nicely hollowed out. There was a clean sweep from the fore peak to the lazarette, only interrupted by the mainmast and the upright water tank, a simple hold such as was considered safe and proper in the days of Columbus and of Drake.