There were several cases coming on; but the captain and girl were first tried together. They were mixing freely with the crowd; and as it afterwards turned out that everyone—no matter who—had a right to address the court, for aught we knew they might have been arguing their own case. At what precise moment the trial began it would be hard to say. There was no swearing of witnesses, and no regular jury. Now and then somebody leaped up and shouted out something which might have been evidence; the rest, meanwhile, keeping up an incessant jabbering. Presently the old judge himself began to get excited; and springing to his feet, ran in among the crowd, wagging his tongue as hard as anybody.
The tumult lasted about twenty minutes; and toward the end of it, Captain Crash might have been seen, tranquilly regarding, from his Honour’s platform, the judicial uproar, in which his fate was about being decided.
The result of all this was that both he and the girl were found guilty. The latter was adjudged to make six mats for the queen; and the former, in consideration of his manifold offences, being deemed incorrigible, was sentenced to eternal banishment from the island. Both these decrees seemed to originate in the general hubbub. His Honour, however, appeared to have considerable authority, and it was quite plain that the decision received his approval.
The above penalties were by no means indiscriminately inflicted. The missionaries have prepared a sort of penal tariff to facilitate judicial proceedings. It costs so many days’ labour on the Broom Road to indulge in the pleasures of the calabash; so many fathoms of stone wall to steal a musket; and so on to the end of the catalogue. The judge being provided with a book in which all these matters are cunningly arranged, the thing is vastly convenient. For instance: a crime is proved,—say bigamy; turn to letter B—and there you have it. Bigamy:—forty days on the Broom Road, and twenty mats for the queen. Read the passage aloud, and sentence is pronounced.
After taking part in the first trial, the other delinquents present were put upon their own; in which, also, the convicted culprits seemed to have quite as much to say as the rest. A rather strange proceeding; but strictly in accordance with the glorious English principle, that every man should be tried by his peers. They were all found guilty.
CHAPTER LXXX.
QUEEN POMAREE
It is well to learn something about people before being introduced to them, and so we will here give some account of Pomaree and her family.
Every reader of Cook’s Voyages must remember “Otto,” who, in that navigator’s time, was king of the larger peninsula of Tahiti. Subsequently, assisted by the muskets of the Bounty’s men, he extended his rule over the entire island. This Otto, before his death, had his name changed into Pomaree, which has ever since been the royal patronymic.
He was succeeded by his son, Pomaree II., the most famous prince in the annals of Tahiti. Though a sad debauchee and drunkard, and even charged with unnatural crimes, he was a great friend of the missionaries, and one of their very first proselytes. During the religious wars into which he was hurried by his zeal for the new faith, he was defeated and expelled from the island. After a short exile he returned from Imeeo, with an army of eight hundred warriors, and in the battle of Narii routed the rebellious pagans with great slaughter, and reestablished himself upon the throne. Thus, by force of arms, was Christianity finally triumphant in Tahiti.
Pomaree II., dying in 1821, was succeeded by his infant son, under the title of Pomaree III. This young prince survived his father but six years; and the government then descended to his elder sister, Aimata, the present queen, who is commonly called Pomaree Vahinee I., or the first female Pomaree. Her majesty must be now upwards of thirty years of age. She has been twice married. Her first husband was a son of the old King of Tahar, an island about one hundred miles from Tahiti. This proving an unhappy alliance, the pair were soon afterwards divorced. The present husband of the queen is a chief of Imeeo.