After a three months' absence, I found myself in San Francisco again, without a cent.

When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had become too mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and there were no vacancies on the evening journals,) I was created San Francisco correspondent of the Enterprise, and at the end of five months I was out of debt, but my interest in my work was gone; for my correspondence being a daily one, without rest or respite, I got unspeakably tired of it.
I wanted another change.

The vagabond instinct was strong upon me.
Fortune favored and I got a new berth and a delightful one.

It was to go down to the Sandwich Islands and write some letters for the Sacramento Union, an excellent journal and liberal with employees.
We sailed in the propeller Ajax, in the middle of winter.

The almanac called it winter, distinctly enough, but the weather was a compromise between spring and summer.