In this now-departed calaboose, Melville and the rest were kept in very lenient captivity by Captain Bob. Captain Bob’s notion of discipline was delightfully vague. He insensibly remitted his watchfulness, and the prisoners were free to stroll further and further from the Calabooza. After about two weeks—for days melted deceptively into each other at Tahiti—the crew was again summoned before Wilson, again to declare themselves unshaken in their obstinate refusal to sail again with Captain Guy. So back to the Calabooza they were sent.
The English Missionaries left their cards at the Calabooza in the shape of a package of tracts; three of the French priests—whom the natives viewed, so Melville says, as “no better than diabolical sorcerers”—called in person. One of the priests—called by Melville, Father Murphy—discovered a compatriot among the crew, and celebrated the discovery by sending a present of a basket of bread. Such was the persuasion of the gift that, on Melville’s count, “we all turned Catholics, and went to mass every morning, much to Captain Bob’s consternation. He threatened to keep us in the stocks, if we did not desist.”
After three weeks Wilson seems to have begun to suspect that it was not remotely impossible that he was making a laughing stock of himself in his futile attempt to break the mutineers into contrition. So off the Julia sailed, manned by a new crew. But before sailing, Jermin served his old crew the good turn of having their chests sent ashore. And when each was in possession of his sea-chest, the Calabooza was thronged with Polynesians, each eager to take a tayo, or bosom friend.
Though technically still prisoners, Melville and his former shipmates were allowed a long rope in their wanderings. Melville improved his leisure by attending, each Sunday, the services held in the great church which Pomare had built to be baptised in. In Omoo, Melville gives a detailed account of a typical Sabbath, and then launches into chapters of discussion upon the fruits of Christianity in Polynesia.
At church Melville had observed, among other puzzlingly incongruous performances, a young Polynesian blade standing up in the congregation in all the bravery of a striped calico shirt, with the skirts rakishly adjusted over a pair of white sailor trousers, and hair well anointed with cocoanut oil, ogling the girls with an air of supreme satisfaction. And of those who ate of the bread-fruit of the Eucharist in the morning, he knew several who were guilty of sad derelictions the same night. Desiring, if possible, to find out what ideas of religion were compatible with this behaviour, he and the Long Doctor called upon three sister communicants one evening. While the doctor engaged the two younger girls, Melville lounged on a mat with Ideea, the eldest, dallying with her grass fan, and improving his knowledge of Tahitian.
“The occasion was well adapted to my purpose, and I began.
“‘Ah, Ideea, mickonaree oee?’ the same as drawling out—‘By the by, Miss Ideea, do you belong to the church?’
“‘Yes, me mickonaree,’ was the reply.
“But the assertion was at once qualified by certain reservations; so curious that I cannot forbear their relation.
“‘Mickonaree ena’ (church member here), exclaimed she, laying her hand upon her mouth, and a strong emphasis on the adverb. In the same way, and with similar exclamations, she touched her eyes and hands. This done, her whole air changed in an instant; and she gave me to understand, by unmistakable gestures, that in certain other respects she was not exactly a ‘mickonaree.’ In short, Ideea was