‘Please tell him I should be very happy to come ashore, to water and trade for hogs, coconuts and yams, and to walk about this beautiful island.’
Wainwright translated this and some further civilities and then he said ‘For my own part I am delighted that you will be coming. I have some very grave information for you; and aside from that my own ship is in a sad way for want of the carpenter and his mate and the cooper. As soon as I saw the Surprise heave up I said to Canning “My God, we are saved.” ‘
‘How did you know she was the Surprise^’
‘Bless you, sir, there is no mistaking that towering mainmast, and in any case we have sailed in company many a time in the Channel and the West Indies. I often came aboard you in the Mediterranean with messages from the flag. I served my time as midshipman and master’s mate and passed for lieutenant in ninety-eight; but they never would give me a commission, so in the end I bore up for the merchant service.’
‘Like many another first-rate officer,’ said Jack, shaking his hand.
‘You are very good, sir,’ said Wainwright. ‘But since you are coming in, perhaps I may stay aboard, give you my important news and then show you the channel through the reef, while Pakeea takes his people back in the pahi. They are apt to be a nuisance on deck when it comes to the fine-work of threading the channel and dropping anchor.’
During this time the young chief, overcoming his natural gaiety, had sat with the gravity that became his rank, secretly counting his feathers and looking at them and the cloth through the magnifying glass, whose use he had grasped at once. On deck however there was no gravity at all, except on the part of Sarah and Emily. Once the fish, the yams, sugar-cane, bananas and breadfruit had been brought aboard, most of the islanders followed them, leaving only a few to fend off. All the Surprises who had a word of Polynesian (and at least a score of them were moderately fluent) entered into conversation; and those who had not did the same, contenting themselves with incorrect English spoken loud: ‘Me like um banana. Good. Good.” There were three young Friendly women, who had also had time to oil themselves afresh, which gave their bare torsos a charming gleam, and to ornament their persons with necklaces of flowers and shark’s teeth; but the foremast jacks were shy of accosting them with the officers present, and in any case they seemed strongly aware of rank. One spoke only to Pullings, in his fine blue coat; one to Oakes and Clarissa; and one attached herself to Stephen, sitting by him on the carriage of a gun and entertaining him with a cheerful, very voluble account of some recent occurrence, often laughing as she did so and patting him on the knee. From the very frequent repetition of certain phrases Stephen was convinced that she was recounting a conversation – ‘So I said to him . . . and he said to me … so then I replied . . .
Oh, says he …” Her bubbling high spirits were agreeable for a while, but presently he led her, still talking, to the forecastle, where the little girls (and not so very little either, now that they had begun to shoot up) were watching the scene with displeasure. Jemmy Ducks had told them they were never to say ‘black boogers’ again, as it was not genteel; but these were the words they muttered from time to time. Stephen said they were to curtsy, and that if the young lady wished to touch noses they were to suffer it. This the young woman did as the most natural thing in the world, very gently, bending a little; and then she addressed them in Polynesian. Finding they did not understand she laughed heartily, gave Emily one of her necklaces and Sarah a mother-of-pearl pendant, and continued her flow of speech, pointing now at the island, now at the masthead, and laughing very often.
Presently Jack, Wainwright and Pakeea came on deck and the young chief called out with surprising authority. All the islanders began to leave the ship and Parsons, one of the
South Seas speakers, said privately to Stephen, ‘By your leave, sir: that young female prigged your wipe while you was a-looking at the mast. Shall I tell her to give it back?”
‘Did she indeed, Parsons?’ cried Stephen, clapping his hand to his pocket in a very simple way. ‘Well, never mind. It was an old torn rag of a thing, and I do not grudge it to so pretty a creature.’ ‘But,’ he added inwardly, ‘she also took my little lancet, which I rather regret.’
The pahi shoved off, filled and ran smoothly for the shore at an extraordinary pace, making almost no wake and, because of its wide-spaced double hull, scarcely heeling at all. In addition to the modest voluntary presents, it carried five handkerchiefs, one pocket lancet, two glass bottles (one with a coloured stopper), and one tobacco-box, five iron and two wooden belaying-pins: yet what the islanders had brought so very far outweighed what they had taken that it was impossible for any except the man deprived of his tobacco to feel righteous or indignant.
‘Now, sir,’ said Wainwright, they having returned to the cabin, ‘I must tell you that there is an English ship and several English seamen detained in the island of Moahu, which lies south of . . .’
‘I know its position,’ said Jack. ‘But I have no accurate chart.’
‘Perhaps I had better start by saying that my owners have six ships employed as whalers or as fur-traders to Nootka Sound and the northwards, and these ships often appoint to meet – and others do the same, it being so convenient – at Moahu to refresh and exchange news or owners’ instructions before going on either to Canton for the Nootka ships or down into the Southern Ocean for the rest of their whaling cruise, right down, sometimes by way of Sydney Cove, to Van Diemen’s Land or beyond. And if the fur-traders have not done well in their first season, they lie there and sail back early in the next, before the Americans come round the Horn. Most of the year, when the north-east trades are blowing, we put into Eeahu; but the rest of the time we lie at Pabay, in the north.’
‘Will you draw me a rough map?’ asked Jack, passing pencil and paper.
‘It is easy enough where Moahu is concerned,’ said Wain-wright, and he drew a large figure of eight with a broad waist. ‘North to south is about twenty miles. The smaller lobe at the top, with the harbour of Pabay in the north-east, is Kalahua’s territory. The division between the two rounds is very rough mountain country with forest going far down each side. The southern lobe belongs to Puolani. Rightly speaking she is queen of the whole island, but some generations ago the chiefs in the north rebelled, and now Kalahua, who has knocked all the other northern chiefs on the head, says he is the rightful king of all Moahu, Puolani having eaten pork, which is taboo to women. Everyone says that is nonsense. She certainly eats the usual pieces of enemy chiefs killed in battle, according to custom, but she is a very pious woman, and would never touch pork. So you see, sir, there is war between north and south. Our owners have told us to keep out of it, because we have to use the two harbours, Pabay in the north-east, a good harbour in a deep inlet with a stream at its head when the wet south winds are blowing, and Eeahu in the south, in Puolani’s country, when the trades make it difficult to get out of Pabay. For my own part I should have backed Puolani, who has always been kind to us and true to her word, and who is after all only a poor weak woman, whereas Kalahua is an ugly scrub, not to be trusted. The forces used to be about equal, and both sides treated us civilly; but when I came into Pabay this last time, to join our ships Truelove, William Hardy, and Heartsease, John Trumper, I found everything was changed. Kalahua had a parcel of Europeans, some with muskets, and he had fallen out with our two skippers. He wanted to what he
called borrow their guns, but he did not ask right out and make a point of it until Hardy was in a very awkward position, having heaved down his ship to come at a leak. They were still temporizing when I came in, but by then Kalahua had seized a score of their men on one pretext or another – theft; fornication, by God; touching taboo fruits or trees – and when I went to see him he declared the ships should have no water, no supplies, and the men should not be released until his demands were satisfied. There was something odd and false and disagreeably confident about him, and he kept on putting off our meetings – he was gone up the country, he was sleeping, he was out of sorts.