The second day our young hero continued his journey upward. Likewise the third day, and thus on for ten days! At intervals he would stay his climbing, and directing his telescopic eye toward some remote part of the Archipelago, report what he saw. Once he appeared to lose some of his calmness. It was on discovering far away an assembly of chieftains feasting delightfully on the fat of the land! “Oh,” said he, “how much I longed to be there! At other such rests, he would declare himself able to see places which we now know to have been at least 250 miles off; out where, as other two lines of his express it,
“The ocean breaks in frightful form,
And none can stand before the storm.”
It was all but as bad where the Ebbtide was, but what matter? What sea could make her roll or pitch? So his unfaltering voice would come down again from the clouds, refreshing the weary hearts on deck, with a
“Scull away with a mighty hand,
Great is the calm on all the land!”
At length, on the tenth day, he reached the “top-mast-head,” where, as the poet puts him before our imagination, he is somewhat nearer the moon and stars than he had ever been before. Now he passed the halliard over the mast-head, and at once announced his intention of dining with those heavenly bodies before beginning his downward trip to join his captain and comrades on deck. Here the poet once more drops the curtain, and leaves us to picture for ourselves this banquet in the celestial sphere.
As the curtain lifts, we see that the climbing and sculling have ceased. The poet now proceeds to show that, when the order to hoist sail was given, all hands on board, giants though they were, failed in every attempt. And so again when men’s hearts began to lose all hope, Prince Hightide came to the rescue; and with one Samsonian pull of his prodigious arm, sheeted home that sail of measureless expanse; thus giving to the world another proof of his god-like strength, and making more than ever clear his claim to a high position in the first rank of the aristocratic gods of Cannibal-land.
No sooner was the sail up than into the water went a hundred steering oars at one splash. This is the only steering apparatus the Fijian was practically acquainted with. The number of steering oars, or long, heavy blades, which they resemble, necessary for canoes of these later and puny days, varies from one to six, but seldom more than two are needed.
But the Ebbtide would not answer her helm with a hundred at work. So down went another hundred; but with no better result. Then a third hundred, but the vessel was still in the wind. Now was the order given for hundred after hundred to be added to the number, which soon rose to one thousand; and still the awful sail was shaking and flapping against the mast! At this juncture it was no small comfort to know that the Prince had always some power in reserve, equal to any and every emergency that might arise. And it is interesting to note how our unknown poet displays his skill, both in the creation of emergencies for the exercise of the Prince’s wisdom and power, and in making him ‘bide his time,’ till the moment when he is most wanted at the front. A thousand rudders in the water, and the unwieldy craft is as disobedient and unanswering as ever! Here his Royal Highness rose—his countenance all aglow with unwavering confidence in the omnipotence of mechanical power—“Bring aft the rudder with a thousand oars;” shouted the god. The order was no sooner given than executed. The instant this most mysterious piece of machinery splashed into the sea, the sail filled; and away swept the glorious Ebbtide on her first voyage to the Friendly Islands, where we must follow her. Now the curtain falls, until we discover her in the land of the red man.