280 TEE CRUISE OF THE " CACnALOT." 



who know Tahiti, the New Hebrides, and kindred spots 

 with all their savage, bestial orgies of alternate unbridled 

 lust and unnamable cruelty. Let it be so. For my 

 part, I rejoice that I have no tale of weeks of drunken- 

 ness, of brutal rape, treacherous murder, and almost 

 unthinkable torture to tell. 



For of such is the paradise of the beach-comber, 

 and the hell of the clean man. Not that I have been 

 able to escape it altogether. When I say that I once 

 shipped, unwittingly, as sailing-master of a little white 

 schooner in Noumea, bound to Apia, finding when too 

 late that she was a " blackbirder," " labour vessel," 

 the wise call it, nothing more will be needed to convince 

 the initiated that I have moved in the "nine circles" 

 of Polynesia. 



Some time before the day fixed for our departure, we 

 were busy storing the gifts so liberally showered upon us 

 by our eager friends. Hundreds of bunches of bananas, 

 many thousands of oranges, yams, taro, chillies, fowls, 

 and pigs were accumulated, until the ship looked like a 

 huge market-boat. But we could not persuade any of 

 the natives to ship with us to replace those whose con- 

 tract was now expiring. Samuela and Polly were, after 

 much difficulty, prevailed uj)on by me to go with us to 

 New Zealand, much to my gratification ; but still we were 

 woefully short-handed. At last, seeing that there was no 

 help for it, the skipper decided to run over to Futuna, or 

 Horn Island, where he felt certain of obtaining recruits 

 without any trouble. He did so most unwillingly, as may 

 well be believed, for the new-comers would need much 

 training, while our present Kanaka auxiliaries were the 

 smartest men in the ship. 



The slop-chest was largely drawn upon, to the credit 

 of the crew, who wished in some tangible way to show 



