“But if you will measure off on the chart the distances they are apart, you will easily understand how it is we have sailed so far without seeing them,” said Harry.
The very next day, as Fanny was looking over the starboard side, Harry pointed out to her several blue hillocks rising out of the ocean, which he told her were the northern islands of Fiji, the habitation of a dark-skinned race, once the most notorious cannibals in the Pacific.
“I am very glad to keep away from them, then,” answered Fanny, “for I shouldn’t at all like to run the risk of being captured and eaten.”
“Not much chance of that,” said Harry. “The larger number of them have given up their bad habits, and promise to become as civilised as any of the people in these seas.”
“Still, I would rather not go near their shores,” said Fanny.
She little thought at the time that there were many other islands in every direction, the inhabitants of which were quite as savage as those of Fiji had been.
From the first, Tom Platt had taken a fancy to Dick, who had hitherto behaved himself remarkably well.
“We’ll make a seaman of the lad, if he only sticks to it,” he said to me. “The rope’s-endings, as he tells me he used to get aboard the Eclipse, did him a world of good, though he didn’t think so.”
I always treated Dick in a friendly way, though he was before the mast, and I was glad to find that he did not presume on this, but willingly did whatever he was ordered. Tom had had a hammock slung for Dick near his berth away from the men, whose conversation, he said, was not likely to do him any good.
Our life on board was very regular; Tom and I kept watch and watch, the crew being divided between us, while Harry, as captain, was on deck at all hours whenever he thought it necessary.