Miss McCoy turned away from me quickly and looked off to sea, but didn’t speak. McLean, who had heard me talking came over to me and said:
“They never swear on Pitcairn, Skipper,” he explained. I had offended her. On Pitcairn gentleness rules, and cursing is against their law. I couldn’t see how people could express themselves without cussing—but anyhow I watched myself with a terrific strain in my following conversations.
The young native girl in my overalls asked me:
“Have you any books to give to us?”
I was surprised that “white natives” could read, but I was anxious to make amends for my swearing, and asked her and Miss McCoy to come down in the cabin and help themselves. The only books we had on board at that time were books on navigation, a doctor book, and a partial set of the Encyclopedia Britannica with those volumes from N to S missing.
“You can take all of these,” I told them, “and the books on navigation and the charts if you want them.” Miss McCoy grabbed for the doctor book.
“My people are being wiped out by lockjaw,” she said, “and I am studying medicine from books that passing ships give me, so that I can cure them.”
That was why she was so revered by the natives. She was to save their lives!
“For years our people have begged nails and canvas and ropes from ships so that we can get enough material to make a ship to sail away in to the mainland. I am going in to get medicine and I will bring it back here to stop the deaths caused by lockjaw. There is a kind of a thorn, which when it pricks a person, gives him lockjaw,” she explained. No wonder Frances McCoy, the descendant of a pirate and mutineer, is looked upon as a saint there.
Out of gratitude for the books and charts I gave them, the two women gave me a beautiful screen made of skeleton leaves, painted with the juice of wild berries and a small chest of carved coral. After our bargain was made, we joined the others on the hatches on the main deck. One of the descendants of Christian was asking about the war.