Sunday, January 31, 1909.
All the time they were aboard, they were trying to make me understand something that excited them. They would shout and throw their hands in the air, and jump around the deck, frightening the captain nearly into fits. He would have nothing to do with them, but sat on a box with a gun in his hands throughout their stay. But they did not know what a gun was. I am always interested in this kind of people, so tried to talk to them, as did Henry, but it was the first time I've seen him unable to use the few words he knows. The natives would have nothing to do with him or with the others, for they were too near their own colour, but I was white, and therein lay a great mystery. All the time they jabbered and pointed ashore. As near as I could make out, they wanted us to go in and anchor; but I would not get in among such a crowd of savages for anything, though I should have liked to see their women.
They wore only a small loin-cloth, made from the bark of a tree, and no other ornaments. They were tattooed all over with designs that were new to me and the king had a small ring of shell in his nose.
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They finally got so excited that the captain was frightened, and to make them leave he pointed his gun at them. But they only grabbed for it, thinking p355 it was a present. The iron and brass work interested them the most. They would feel of it and try to break pieces off, and the boats they examined all over, making queer noises at everything they could not understand. Finally the captain got so aroused that he could stand it no longer; he told me to start the engines. While I was getting it ready, five excited faces watched me through the skylight, but as the first gas explosion came, those five excited faces vanished. Our visitors had jumped overboard into their canoes, leaving behind the things I had given them in exchange for their spears and the chair. Also, they had left two strings of porpoise teeth (worth about £2 in the Solomons, where they use them for money). I kept the porpoise teeth, but the other things we wrapped in an old oilskin and threw into one of the boats. I went below and threw on the clutch, and when I came up, I saw the five men fighting over the old iron I had given them. They fought and squabbled, and dropped the biscuits overboard into the water, apparently not recognising their value. One, to whom I had given a stick of tobacco, had tasted it, and finding it nauseous, had thrown it away.
We steamed ten miles into the passage between the two islands; then I stopped the engine and we slowly drifted through. At sunset a canoe followed us for an hour, but we drifted too fast for them, and they gave it up when about five miles from shore. I'll wager it was a tired canoe-load of natives that put in p356 to land last night, for they had to paddle hard against the current.
The captain seems to have a notion in his head that we mustn't make any speed. What his reason is, I don't know.
To-day we are calmed about twenty miles off the islands, and it's hotter than sin. The tar in the deck is melting and bubbling up through the seams, so that a person feels as if walking on molasses, when compelled to walk.