176 WHALING 



their new religion, the atolls where missionaries had settled were 

 safer for whalemen than those unregenerate isles where less 

 sophisticated savages, were liable, without warning, to break 

 forth into wanton murder — as witness the story of the Awash- 

 onks. 



At sunrise on October 5, 1835, the ship Awashonks of Fal- 

 mouth, Prince Coffin master, then some two years from home, 

 sighted an island twenty miles away. On the chart, which 

 placed it in latitude 5° 35' north and longitude 168° 13' east, it 

 was called Baring's Island, and was said to be uninhabited; so 

 the Awashonks attempted to weather it to the south. But a 

 squall blew up and for a time hid the island, and when it had 

 passed she had so fallen off from the wind that it was necessary 

 to run under the lee. Captain Coffin wore ship and stood for a 

 point six miles or so to the westward. 



On the island — a circle of land nowhere more than half a mile 

 wide, built on coral and enclosing a lagoon four or five miles 

 long — coconut trees and plantains grew in profusion; and, the 

 chart notwithstanding, the crew of the Awashonks saw naked 

 men running along the shore ahead of the ship. As the Awash- 

 onks rounded the point and opened the channel into the lagoon, 

 three canoes appeared, on their way out, and Captain Coffin 

 ordered the ship hove to. 



She came into the wind with her main topsail to the mast, 

 half a mile from land, and all hands lined the rail to watch the 

 approaching canoes. Men at sea on an old-time whaling voyage 

 were glad enough to spend an hour or two bartering for fruit, and 

 the three or four islanders in each canoe were bringing coconuts 

 and plantains. 



The canoes swung alongside the ship and the natives sold 

 their produce for pieces of iron and ivory, then came scrambling 

 on board as naked as when their mothers bore them — except the 

 chief, who wore a string of fish teeth round his neck, a roll of 

 yellow plantain leaf thrust through the enormous hole bored and 

 stretched in the lobe of each ear, and a string of grass draped 

 roundl^his loins^whence it fell to his knees. They spoke a 

 strange tongue, which no one on board could understand, al- 



