CHAPTER VI
CAPTAIN BEN PEESE
For the next few weeks we cruised about among the islands of the Kingsmill and Gilbert groups, collectively known as the Line Islands. The most southerly of them is Arurai or Hope Island, in the latitude 2.41 S., longitude 177 E.—the most northerly, Makin or Butaritu, in latitude 3.20, 45 N.
We did good business generally going through this group, and steady going trade it was, varied only by the mad drunken bouts and wild dances which took place when we were at anchor—these last beyond description.
Just then I was badly hurt fishing on shore one day. It was peculiarly a South Sea accident. I was standing on a jutting ledge of coral, holding my rod, when it suddenly broke off, allowing me to fall downwards on sharp edges, where I was terribly cut about the legs and body. The green or live coral has the property of making a festering wound whenever it pierces the true skin, and for weeks, with my unhealed wounds, I was nearly mad with pain. The Captain did all he could for me, having a netted hammock slung on deck, where I could see all that was going on. One day in a fit of pain I fell out and nearly cracked my skull. All the native girls on board were most kind and patient in nursing me. So the Captain said the least I could do was to marry one, if only out of gratitude and to brush away the flies.
Whatever some people might call these poor girls they had at least one virtue, which, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins. Pity for any one in bodily pain they possessed in the highest degree. Many an hour did they sit beside me, bathing my aching head with a sponge and salt water—this last the universal and infallible cure.
We called at Peru or Francis Island, where we obtained nine natives—five men and four young women. The islanders here are rude and insulting to all strangers not carrying arms, and almost as threatening as those of Taputana. I was, however, too ill to go on shore here.
After a two months' cruise through this group we bore away for Strong's Island, distant some five hundred miles. We had favourable winds, and the brig's speed was something wonderful. In thirty-eight hours we had covered a distance of four hundred and ninety miles, when the lofty hills of this gem of the North Pacific, covered with brightest verdure, gladdened our eyes after the long, low-lying chains of islets and atolls of the Marshall and Kingsmill groups.