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On the eighteenth day out from Sydney, we were cruising under the lee of Erromanga—of course you know Erromanga, an isolated island between the New Hebrides and the Loyalty group—when suddenly our dusky Polynesian boy, Nassaline, who was at the masthead on the lookout, gave a surprised cry of "Boat ahoy!" and pointed with his skinny black finger to a dark dot away southward on the horizon, in the direction of Fiji.
I strained my eyes and saw—well, a barrel or something. For myself, I should never have made out it was a boat at all, being somewhat slow of vision at great distances; but, bless your heart! these Kanaka lads have eyes like hawks for pouncing down upon a canoe or a sail no bigger than a speck afar off; so when Nassaline called out confidently, "Boat ahoy!" in his broken English, I took out my binocular, and focused it full on the spot towards which the skinny black finger pointed. Probably, thought I to myself, a party of natives, painted red, on the war-trail against their enemies in some neighboring island; or perhaps a "labor vessel," doing a veiled slave-trade in "indentured apprentices" for New Caledonia or the Queensland planters.
To my great surprise, however, I found out, when I got my glasses fixed full upon it, it was neither of these, but an open English row-boat, apparently, making signs of distress, and alone in the midst of the wide Pacific.
Now, mind you, one doesn't expect to find open English row-boats many miles from land, drifting about casually in those far-eastern waters. There's very little European shipping there of any sort, I can tell you; a man may sometimes sail for days together across that trackless sea without so much as speaking a single vessel, and the few he does come across are mostly engaged in what they euphoniously call "the labor-trade"—in plain English, kidnaping blacks or browns, who are induced to sign indentures for so many years' service (generally "three yams," that is to say, for three yam crops), and are then carried off by force or fraud to some other island, to be used as laborers in the cane-fields or cocoa-nut groves. So I rubbed my eyes when I saw an open boat, of European build, tossing about on the open, and sang out to the man at the wheel:
CONTENTS
WE SIGHT A BOAT.
THE BOAT'S CREW.
THE MYSTERY SOLVED.
MARTIN LUTHER'S STORY.
A BREAK-DOWN.
ON THE ISLAND.
ERRORS EXCEPTED.
HOT WORK.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
There was a terrible scene of noise and confusion
Where the Frenchmen landed
Natives of the Island of Tanaki
The savages fell back and listened with eagerness
I strained my eyes and saw—well, a barrel or something. For myself, I should never have made out it was a boat at all, being somewhat slow of vision at great distances; but, bless your heart! these Kanaka lads have eyes like hawks for pouncing down upon a canoe or a sail no bigger than a speck afar off; so when Nassaline called out confidently, "Boat ahoy!" in his broken English, I took out my binocular, and focused it full on the spot towards which the skinny black finger pointed. Probably, thought I to myself, a party of natives, painted red, on the war-trail against their enemies in some neighboring island; or perhaps a "labor vessel," doing a veiled slave-trade in "indentured apprentices" for New Caledonia or the Queensland planters.
To my great surprise, however, I found out, when I got my glasses fixed full upon it, it was neither of these, but an open English row-boat, apparently, making signs of distress, and alone in the midst of the wide Pacific.
Now, mind you, one doesn't expect to find open English row-boats many miles from land, drifting about casually in those far-eastern waters. There's very little European shipping there of any sort, I can tell you; a man may sometimes sail for days together across that trackless sea without so much as speaking a single vessel, and the few he does come across are mostly engaged in what they euphoniously call "the labor-trade"—in plain English, kidnaping blacks or browns, who are induced to sign indentures for so many years' service (generally "three yams," that is to say, for three yam crops), and are then carried off by force or fraud to some other island, to be used as laborers in the cane-fields or cocoa-nut groves. So I rubbed my eyes when I saw an open boat, of European build, tossing about on the open, and sang out to the man at the wheel:
CONTENTS
WE SIGHT A BOAT.
THE BOAT'S CREW.
THE MYSTERY SOLVED.
MARTIN LUTHER'S STORY.
A BREAK-DOWN.
ON THE ISLAND.
ERRORS EXCEPTED.
HOT WORK.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
There was a terrible scene of noise and confusion
Where the Frenchmen landed
Natives of the Island of Tanaki
The savages fell back and listened with eagerness