42 In the South Seas 



III 



(a * little coral sandy place,' on which the only sign of 

 human life discoverable savoured grimly of human 

 death — consisting, as it did, of a native ' Morae ' 

 surrounded by charred posts, ' the height of which 

 told very plainly what had been hung to cook 

 there ') ; how they escaped in the yacht's boats from 

 this spot, which was absolutely teeming with sug- 

 gestions of the most exquisite nature to a party of 

 shipwrecked mariners, and ' were hour after hour 

 pulling and baling in a rough, broken sea,' until at 

 length they were picked up by a vessel bound for 

 Caruka — may be seen reflected in the South Sea 

 Bubbles} 



They seem to have been almost the first people 

 who went yachting in the South Pacific. Writing 

 to his mother, George Kingsley said : ' Here we are, 

 yachting in the great Southern Ocean — the first 

 who have tried it in these parts. There was once 

 an aspiring stockbroker who went yachting higher 

 up, but the natives had him for " long-pig," and no 

 one has repeated the experiment since.' 



His grandfather had seen the great eruption of 

 the soufriere of St. Vincent in 1 8 i 2 ; and he him- 

 self, on his first voyage out to Australia, via the 

 West Indies and Panama, narrowly escaped witness- 

 ing a catastrophe almost equally terrible, for the ship 

 he was aboard of, after encountering a gale of extra- 

 ordinary violence in the ' Roaring Forties,' entered 



1 South Sea Bubbles ^ by the Earl and the Doctor. (Bentley, 1872 ; 

 now Macmillan and Co.) 



