“Next came forward a party of men, with hair frizzled in the highest style of Fijian art, tapering beards, long tapas of snowy native cloth, contrasting with their own swarthy color and trailing on the grass, their arms and faces shining with cocoanut oil, carrying their stout and polished war-clubs; and, having arranged themselves in two divisions, a pace apart, in open distance, they raised with united voices a piercing war song, in time with which all made the same impressive gestures. Now they bent back their bodies, elevating their war-clubs in the air, in seeming preparation for attack; then, with faces of determined courage, lifting higher their shrill, fierce chorus, all leaped as one man onward, as if about to meet a furious foe; and, at last, as if they had achieved a noble victory changing to triumphal notes their yell of onset, with fiend-like grimaces they danced wildly about in a thousand intricate and changeful steps.
“Our company, being requested by several chiefs, on the second day of the festival, to amuse in our turn the assembled crowds, concluded to perform a few military manoeuvres. We chose one of us captain, recalled what we knew of soldiers’ tactics, and keeping time by a whistled tune, in lack of better accompaniment, advanced in open order, and charged bayonets; marched with muskets shouldered in lock-step and solid column; formed a hollow square, and, finally wheeled into line. All our movements were watched with eager eyes by the natives who expressed their pleasure by loud plaudits, to which, of course, like true soldiers, we gave slight heed, but with face unmoved, proceeded through the manual exercise. When the order came ‘make ready—aim—fire,’ one of our muskets happening to be loaded, discharged its contents over the heads of scores of seated savages, whose dismay now equalled their previous approbation. Their earnest inquiries were hardly evaded by assuring them that the piece was overcharged with powder.
“Towards evening the festival was concluded and the company began to disperse. Those who had sailed to the place, started to the shore where the canoes were secured and embarked in their little fleets in various directions. Our party sailed in pleasant company with others bound for Bonne Rarah. When we came within a few miles of this town, a burning object was discovered on the water, which, on a nearer approach, we found to be our beautiful ship to which fire had been set by the savages who had remained behind for the sake of her iron work. This was a sad conclusion to the enjoyment experienced at the festival. The satisfaction that we had felt in looking out from our lonely abode upon the hull of the Glide was now taken away, and we felt more than ever deprived of remembrances of home.
“A few weeks after the departure for Bou of Captain Archer, a large double canoe arrived at Bonne Rarah, from which we learned that the captain and his party were safe; that the brig Niagara, Capt. Brown, of Salem, had been wrecked on a reef midway between Overlau and Bou and that her crew were now staying at this latter island. Thus, the two only vessels at the Fijis at this time were wrecked on the same day, and in the same storm; and, very remarkably, no member of either crew was afterwards slain by the natives.
“A part of the crew, with our second officer and Mr. Carey, left us on the return of this canoe to Bou, thus reducing our number to sixteen men. The separation seemed like bidding a mutual farewell for life, narrowed the circle in which our spirits were chiefly sustained by common sympathies and hopes, and deepened that feeling of loneliness which previously parting with others had occasioned. To miss a single face which we were wont to see, was deeply felt. The officers and crew of the Glide, once held together by duties on shipboard, and, afterwards by the still stronger community of suffering, were dispersing in various directions whilst the lot of those who went away, and of those who staid behind was enshrouded by the same cloud of dark uncertainty. Some were about to suffer many more trials before reaching home; and of the return of others to their native land there has yet been no account.”
Strangely enough the journal of the wreck of the Glide ends in this abrupt fashion as if it were “to be continued in our next.” Curious to learn in what manner the crew was rescued from its long exile in the Fijis a search was begun among the log-books of other Salem ships trading with those islands in the thirties. It was like hunting a needle in a haystack, but the mystery was uncovered by the log of the bark Peru of Salem, Captain John H. Eagleston. Under date of June 7th, 1831, he wrote while among the Fiji Islands:
“Visited by a double canoe with about 50 natives, and a boat from a town called Lebouka. Got 9 turtle out of the canoe, 3 for a musket. Was informed by the chiefs in the canoe of Captain Archer of ship Glide being cast away at Muddy-vater and Captain Brown in the Niagara at Bou, and that they had lost everything belonging to them. Which I had every reason to believe as the canoe had several trunks and chests in it. Got up the boarding netting. At 3 A. M. sent the whale boat up to Bou, with the interpreter and 5 Lebouka men with a large present to the king and a letter to Captain Brown which was from his wife. People employed in putting arms in order.
“June 8—at 9 A. M. our boat returned from Bou with 2 boats in company which belonged to the Brig. Took on board Captain Brown, Captain Vandeford, officers and crew of the Brig (Niagara) and 2 officers and 2 men belonging to the Glide. Most of them belonging to Salem and in all 15. Many of them without shirts to their backs or shoes to their feet and some with a small part of a pair of trousers. On learning that Captain Archer had left Bou a few days before for Goro, he being in distress and suffering, I thought it my duty to send word to him that I was here.
“June 10th. Archer with 2 of his men came from Bou.”
The whereabouts of the other men of the Glide being discovered in this way, they were later picked up and brought home, and their story ended happily, as it should, for they deserved fairer prospects after the ill-fortune which laid them by the heels in the Fijis as those islands were in those far away years when the white man had first found them out.