The departure of the 'Moses Taylor' was evidently regarded as a great event at Honolulu. At the hour appointed for our sailing, a great crowd had assembled on the wharf. All the notabilities of the place seemed to be there. First and foremost was the King of the Sandwich Islands himself, Kamehameha V.—a jolly-looking, portly old fellow, standing about six feet high, and weighing over five-and-twenty stone—every inch and ounce a king. Then there were the chief ministers of his court, white, yellow, and dusky. There were also English, Americans, and Chinese, with a crowd of full-blooded Kanakas—all very orderly and admiring. And round the outskirts of the throng were several carriages filled with native ladies.
Punctually at half-past 4 p.m., we got away from our moorings, with "three cheers for Honolulu," which were raised by a shipwrecked crew we had on board. Leaving the pier, we shortly passed through the opening in the reef which forms the entrance to the harbour, and steamed steadily eastward in the direction of San Francisco.
I must explain how it was that the "three cheers for Honolulu" were raised. The 'Saginaw' was an American war-ship that had been sent with a contract party to Midway Island in the North Pacific—some fifteen hundred miles west-north-west of the Sandwich Islands—to blast the coral-reef there, in order to provide a harbourage for the line of large steamers running between San Francisco and China. The money voted for the purpose by the Government having been spent, the 'Saginaw' was on its return voyage from the island, when the captain determined to call at Ocean Island to see if there were any shipwrecked crews there; but in a fog, the ship ran upon a coral-reef, and was itself wrecked. The men, to the number of ninety-three, contrived to reach the island, where they remained sixty-nine days, during which they lived mostly on seal meat and the few stores they had been able to save from their ship. The island itself is entirely barren, containing only a few bushes and a sort of dry grass, with millions of rats—supposed to have bred from rats landed from shipwrecked vessels. Strict military discipline was preserved by the officers, and the men as a body behaved remarkably well.
At length, no vessel appearing in sight, four of the sailors volunteered to row in an open boat to the Sandwich Islands—more than a thousand miles distant—for the purpose of reporting the wreck of the ship, and sending relief to those on the island. The boat departed, reached the reef which surrounds Kauai, an island to the north-west of Oahu, and was there wrecked, only one of the men succeeding in reaching the shore. So soon as the intelligence of the wreck of the 'Saginaw' reached Honolulu, the Government immediately dispatched a steamer to take the men off the desert island; and hence the enthusiastic cheers for Honolulu, raised by the rescued officers and men of the American ship, who are now all on board the 'Moses Taylor,' on their way back to San Francisco.
I must now describe my new ship. She is called the 'Rolling Moses;' but with what justice I am as yet unable to say. She certainly looks singularly top-hampered,—altogether unlike any British ship that I have ever seen. She measures twice as much in the beam as the 'City of Melbourne;' is about 2000 tons register; is flat-bottomed, and draws about fourteen feet of water when laden. She looks like a great big house afloat, or rather a row of houses more than thirty feet high. The decks seemed piled one a-top of the other, quite promiscuously. First there is the dining-saloon, with cabins all round it; above is the drawing-room, with more cabins; then above that is the hurricane deck, with numerous deck-houses for the captain and officers; and then, towering above all, there is the large beam-engine right between the paddle-boxes. Altogether it looks a very unwieldy affair, and I would certainly much rather trust myself to such a ship as the 'City of Melbourne.' It strikes me that in a heavy sea, 'Moses's' hull would run some risk of parting company with the immense structure above.
The cabin accommodation is, however, greatly superior to that of my late ship,—there is so much more room, and the whole arrangements for the comfort of the passengers are all that could be desired. The Americans certainly do seem to understand comfort in travelling. The stewards and people about are civil and obliging, and don't seem to be always looking for a "tip," as is so customary on board an English boat. This ship also is cleaner than the one I have left—there are none of those hideous smells that so disgusted me on board 'The City.' The meals are better, and there is much greater variety—lots of different little dishes—of meat, stews, mashed potatoes, squashes, hominy or corn-cake, and such like. So far as the living goes, therefore, I think I shall get on very well on board the 'Moses Taylor.'
The weather is wet and what sailors call "dirty," and it grows sensibly colder. As there is no pleasure in remaining on deck, I keep for the most part below. I like my company very much—mostly consisting of the shipwrecked men of the 'Saginaw.' They are nice, lively fellows; they encourage me to talk, and we have many a hearty laugh together. Some of them give me no end of yarns about the late war, in which they were engaged; and they tell me (whether true or not, I have no means of knowing), that the captain of the ship we are in was first lieutenant of the "pirate" ship 'Florida.' I have not found amongst my companions as yet any of that self-assertion or pride of nationality said to distinguish the Yankee; nor have I heard a word from them of hostility to John Bull. Indeed, for the purpose of drawing them out, I began bragging a little about England, but they let me have my own way without contradiction. They say nothing about politics, or, if they allude to the subject, express very moderate opinions. Altogether, I get on with them; and like them very much.
The 'Moses Taylor' proves a steadier sea-boat than I expected from her built-up appearance. She certainly gives many a long steady roll; but there is little pitching or tossing. When the sea strikes her, she quivers all over in a rather uncomfortable way. She is rather an old ship; she formerly ran between Vancouver and San Francisco, and is certainly the worse for wear. The huge engine-shafts shake the beams which support them; the pieces of timber tremble under the heavy strokes of the engine, and considerable apertures open from time to time in the deck as she heaves to and fro. The weather, however, is not stormy; and the ship will doubtless carry us safely to the end of our voyage,—going steadily, as she does, at the rate of about eight knots an hour. And as the distance between Honolulu and the American coast is about 2100 miles, we shall probably make the voyage in about ten days.
On the eighth day after leaving Honolulu, an incident occurred which made a startling impression on me. While we were laughing and talking in the cabin—kept down there by the rain—we were told that a poor man, who had been ailing since we left port, had breathed his last. It seemed that he had some affection of the gullet which prevented his swallowing food. The surgeon on board did not possess the necessary instrument to enable him to introduce food into his stomach, so that he literally died of starvation. He occupied the berth exactly opposite mine, and though I knew he was ill, I had no idea that his end was so near. He himself; however, had been aware of it, and anxiously wished that he might survive until he reached San Francisco, where his wife was to meet him at the landing. But it was not to be; and his sudden decease gave us all a great shock.
We had our breakfast and dinner that day whilst the body was lying in the cabin. We heard the carpenter busy on the main deck knocking together a coffin for its reception. Every time he knocked a nail in, I thought of the poor dead fellow who lay beside us. I began to speculate as to the various feelings with which passengers land in a new place. Some are mere passing visitors like myself, bent on seeing novel sights; some are going thither, full of hope, to make a new settlement in life; some are returning home, expecting old friends waiting on the pier-head to meet and welcome them. But there are sad meetings, too; and here there will be an anxious wife waiting at the landing-place, only to receive the dead body of her husband.