Oriental tales, for the entertainment of youth / Selected from the most eminent English writers

by Anonymous

In the midst of that vast ocean, commonly called the South-Sea, lie the islands of Solomon. In the centre of these lies one not only distant from the rest, which are immensely scattered round it, but also larger beyond proportion. An ancestor of the prince, who now reigns absolute in this central island, has, through a long descent of ages, entailed the name of Solomon’s Islands on the whole, by the effect of that wisdom wherewith he polished the manners of his people.

A descendant of one of the great men of this happy island, becoming a gentleman to so improved a degree as to despise the good qualities which had originally ennobled his family, thought of nothing but how to support and distinguish his dignity by the pride of an ignorant mind, and a disposition abandoned to pleasure. He had a house on the sea-side, where he spent great part of his time in hunting and fishing; but found himself at a loss in pursuit of those important diversions, by means of a long slip of marsh land, overgrown with high reeds, that lay between his house and the sea. Resolving, at length, that it became not a man of his quality to submit to a restraint in his pleasures, for the ease and convenience of an obstinate mechanic; and having often endeavoured, in vain, to buy out the owner, who was an honest poor basket-maker, and whose livelihood depended on working up the flags of those reeds, in a manner peculiar to himself, the gentleman took advantage of a very high wind, and commanded his servants to burn down the barrier.

The basket-maker, who saw himself undone, complained of the oppression in terms more suited to his sense of the injury, than the respect due to the rank of the offender; and the reward this imprudence procured him, was the additional injustice of blows and reproaches, and all kinds of insult and indignity.

There was but one way to a remedy, and he took it: for going to the capital, with the marks of his hard usage upon him, he threw himself at the feet of the king, and procured a citation for his oppressor’s appearance; who, confessing the charge, proceeded to justify his behaviour by the poor man’s unmindfulness of the submission due from the vulgar to gentlemen of rank and distinction.

“But pray,” replied the king, “what distinction of rank had the grand-father of your father, when, being a cleaver of wood in the palace of my ancestors, he was raised from among those vulgar you speak of with such contempt, in reward for an instance he gave of his courage and loyalty in defence of his master? Yet his distinction was nobler than yours: it was the distinction of soul, not of birth; the superiority of worth, not of fortune! I am sorry I have a gentleman in my kingdom who is base enough to be ignorant that ease and distinction of fortune were bestowed on him but to this end, that, being at rest from all cares of providing for himself, he might apply his heart, head, and hand, for the public advantage of others.”

Here the king, discontinuing his speech, fixed an eye of indignation on a sullen resentment of mien which he observed in the haughty offender, who muttered out his dislike of the encouragement this way of thinking must give to the commonality, who, he said, were to be considered as persons of no consequence, in comparison of men who were born to be honoured. “Where reflection is wanting,” replied the king, with a smile of disdain, “men must find their defects in the pain of their sufferings. Yanhuma,” added he, turning to a captain of his gallies, “strip the injured and the injurer; and, conveying them to one of the most barbarous and remote of the islands, set them ashore in the night, and leave them both to their fortune.”

The place in which they were landed was a marsh; under cover of those flags the gentleman was in hopes of concealing himself, and giving the slip to his companion, whom he thought it a disgrace to be found with: but the lights in the galley having giving an alarm to the savages, a considerable body of them came down, and discovered in the morning the two strangers in their hiding-place. Setting up a dismal yell, they surrounded them; and advancing nearer and nearer with a kind of clubs, seemed determined to dispatch them, without sense of hospitality or mercy.

Here the gentleman began to discover that the superiority of his blood was imaginary; for between the consciousness of shame and cold, under the nakedness he had never been used to; a fear of the event from the fierceness of the savages approach; and the want of an idea whereby to soften or divert their asperity, he fell behind the poor sharer of his calamity, and with an unsinewed, apprehensive, unmanly sneakingness of mien, gave up the post of honour, and made a leader of the very man whom he had thought it a disgrace to consider as a companion.

The basket-maker on the contrary, to whom the poverty of his condition had made nakedness habitual, to whom a life of pain and mortification represented death as not dreadful, and whose remembrance of his skill in arts, of which these savages were ignorant, gave him hopes of becoming safe, from demonstrating that he could be useful, moved with bolder and more open freedom; and having plucked a handful of the flags, sat down without emotion, and making signs that he would shew them something worthy of their attention, fell to work with smiles and noddings; while the savages drew near, and gazed with expectation of the consequence.