“I guess there’s been a mistake somewhere about these here Marquesas natives. They don’t seem to me to be so very partic’lar treacherous. How do they strike you?”
“Why,” said I, “I have been amusing myself by very closely watching those two who were aboard, and I am bound to admit that their behaviour seemed quite unexceptionable. I mean,” I continued, noticing a slightly puzzled look on my companion’s face, “they seemed to behave pretty much like the natives of most of the other islands which we have visited, except that they did not attempt to steal anything.”
“Yep, I guess I noticed that too,” observed the skipper. “Well,” he continued, “we’ll just go on keepin’ our eyes open for a bit, but I don’t reckon upon our findin’ ourselves up agin anything so very serious in this here island.”
Brown had given our chocolate-coloured visitors to understand that we were to have a busy day aboard the schooner; but as a matter of fact that statement was merely an attempt to “bluff” the natives, “bluffing” having latterly become almost an instinctive act with the skipper. However, although we had nothing very particular to do we at least made a show of great industry, easing up and overhauling rigging, renewing chafing mats, and so on, Brown’s notion being to convey to the natives the idea that we had called in to overhaul and refit, rather than that we were in quest of sandalwood; by which ruse I think he hoped to get the wood at a somewhat cheaper rate than usual.
On the following morning Oahika and his crew came off to us again, bringing more fruit, a small quantity of vegetables, about a dozen eggs, and two animated barn-door skeletons which the skipper positively refused to purchase at any price. And with them came four other canoes, each of which had some eight or ten sticks of sandalwood in her.
“Hullo!” exclaimed the skipper, when he saw this display, “what in the nation do they mean by bringin’ off them scraps? Is it to show us the sort o’ stuff that they have to sell, I wonder? Hi, you!”—to Oahika—“what have them fellers brought off that wood for?”
“Sandalwood, that,” explained the savage. “They want it sell dem wood you.”
“Sell!” ejaculated the skipper; “sell! Why, there ain’t enough wood there to light a fire with. Is that all that they’ve got?—because there ain’t enough there to make it worth my while to open out my ‘truck’. I wouldn’t give one bandanner handkercher for the whole measly lot!”
Oahika conferred with his friends for a while, and then turned to the skipper.
“Mans say,” he explained, “that dem wood all it got cut. Plenty more yonder,” pointing generally toward the shore. “They say s’pose you want it more wood, you go ’shore and show it dem how much you want, and mans cut it for you.”