Whenever the tide was low, the reef-bordered portions of the coast were always frequented by various parties of natives, busily occupied in searching in the pools and under the coral boulders for fish, crabs, and molluscs; at night, when the sea was calm, bright fires blazed on the water and the shore, and marked where fish-spearing was going on from sheltered ledges of rock or slowly-moving canoes.
Of all the people, "Friend of England" was perhaps the most amusing. He was infected with the garrulity of old age, and made the most of his opportunities by unblushing mendicancy.
As he came alongside, sitting—a very dignified figure in top-hat and white knickerbockers—upright and motionless in his canoe, which was manned by juvenile paddlers, he always, as he neared the schooner, took from his pocket an old silk cravat and arranged it round his neck.
After a few coconuts or oranges had been handed up, the old man would come below and shake hands all round. "I want smoke cigar, I want drink rum," was followed by a prompt refusal of anything smaller than a tumbler. Then would come the invariable preamble: "You my friend, I your friend; we give presents and make return,"—with reference to the coconuts; followed by demands for medicine, turpentine, camphor, quinine, scent, and Eno; and as all his wants could not be satisfied, he professed he could not understand why on earth we had come without these things. When we came again we were to bring all of them, and we should then be great friends. He desired that we would convey the following to every one at home—foreigners he did not like:—"You go tell all men—Come here, come here, come here. I Friend of England, I good man. You bring much medicine, you give me—we be great friends, I make return. I plenty good man; I speak true, I no lie!"
He carried a large number of chits from officers of ships that had called here during many years past, and was very anxious that we should add to the number.[25]
"FRIEND OF ENGLAND."
Poor old "Friend of England"! his lines are no longer cast in pleasant places. His last wife, the widow of a friend, became blind, and he can no longer obtain another on account of his old age; he has become estranged from his son because of his too amorous conduct towards the latter's wife, and has had to pay several fines on account of similar behaviour towards other neighbours.
Our last glimpse of him as he made for the shore, after having been assisted to his canoe, generally caught him in the act of undoing his cherished necktie and restoring it, carefully folded, to his pocket.
One day—when we had so far broken through our rule as to give him a bottle of rum and water to take ashore "for medicine after we had gone"—going a couple of hours later into the village, we found "Friend of England" tottering up a path, and tried to take his portrait. But the old scamp, who all his life had lived in the sun, refused on this occasion to come out of the shade, and was so afflicted with involuntary staggers, that the result of several exposures was a very qualified success, and lost much of the impressiveness of the original, through his unwillingness to don his necktie in the customary Byronic style.