I could not have eaten a fiftieth part of what was offered, but as declining would have been regarded as a rudeness, I begged them to take it to the chief's house for me.
On my return a singular and characteristic scene presented itself. I could not help smiling as I thought what a shock it would have given many of my steady-going friends and relatives in Sydney, most of whom, if untravelled, resemble nothing so much as the inhabitants of English country towns, and are equally apt to be displeased at any departure from the British standard of manners and morals.
The Captain was seated on a mat in the great council-house of the tribe, talking business with a white-headed warrior, whom he introduced as the king of the Mortlock group. The women had decorated the Captain's neck and broad breast with wreaths—two girls were seated a little farther off, binding into his hat the tail-feathers of the tropic bird. He seemed in a merry mood, and whispering something to the old man, pointed to me.
In a moment a dozen young girls bounded up, and with laughing eyes and lips, commenced to circle around me in a measure, the native name of which means "a dance for a husband."
They formed a pretty enough picture, with their waving arms and flowing flower-crowned hair. I plead guilty to applauding vociferously, and rewarding them with a quantity of the small red beads which the Mortlock girls sew into their head-dresses.
Thus, with but slight variations, our life flowed, if monotonously, pleasantly, even luxuriously on—as we sailed to and fro amid these charmed isles, from Namoluk to Truk, thence to the wondrously beautiful Royalist Islands, inhabited by a wild vigorous race. They also made much of us and gave dances and games in honour of our visit.
And still we sailed and sailed. Days passed, and weeks. Still glided we over the summer sea—still gazed we at a cloudless sky—still felt we the languorous, sighing breath of the soft South Pacific winds.
Day by day the same flock of predatory frigate birds skimmed and swept o'er the glittering ocean plain, while high overhead the wandering tropic birds hung motionless, with their scarlet tail-feathers floating like lance pennons in relief against the bright blue heavens.
Now, the Captain had all a true seaman's dislike to seeing a sea-bird shot. One day, off Ocean Island, Jansen, the mate, came out of the cabin with a long, smooth bore, which he proceeded to load with buck shot, glancing the while at two graceful tropic birds, which, with snow-white wings outspread, were poised in air directly over the deck, apparently looking down with wondering eye at the scene below.
"What are you going to shoot, Jansen?" inquired the Captain, in a mild voice.