CHAPTER XI
MUTINY AND MISSIONARIES--TAHITI
“Ah, truant humour. But to me
That vine-wreathed urn of Ver, in sea
Of halcyons, where no tides do flow
Or ebb, but waves bide peacefully
At brim, by beach where palm trees grow
That sheltered Omai’s olive race--
Tahiti should have been the place
For Christ in advent.”
--HERMAN MELVILLE: _Clarel_.
It was in the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that Melville made
good his escape from the valley of Typee. The Australian whaler--called
by Melville the _Julia_--which had broken his four months’ captivity,
lay with her main-topsail aback, about a league from the land. “She
turned out to be a small, slatternly looking craft, her hull and
spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly white, and
everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. Leaning carelessly
over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking fellows in
Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks of mottled
bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich berry-brown of a
seaman’s complexion in the tropics.” So extraordinary was Melville’s
appearance--“a robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders,
my hair and beard were uncut, and I betrayed other evidences of my
recent adventure”--that as the boat came alongside, a low cry ran fore
and aft the deck. Immediately on gaining the deck, Melville was beset
on all sides by questions.
Indeed, never afterwards, it appears, could Melville escape a like
curiosity. Henceforth he was to be “the man who lived among the
cannibals.” Nor does he always seem to have been so uncommunicative as
he grew in later years. In the Preface to _Omoo_, after recording the
fact that he kept no journal during his wanderings in the South Seas,
he says: “The frequency, however, with which these incidents have been
verbally related, has tended to stamp them upon the memory.” There
is novelty in his logic: all twice-told tales are not always just-so
stories. He says, too, in the Preface to _Typee_: “The incidents
recorded in the following pages have often served, when ‘spun as a
yarn,’ not only to relieve the weariness of many a night-watch at sea,
but to excite the warmest sympathies of the author’s shipmates.”
Upon being taken aboard the _Julia_, Melville was almost immediately
seen by the captain, a young, pale, slender, sickly looking creature,
who signed Melville up for one cruise, engaging to discharge him at the
next port.
Life on board the _Julia_ was, if anything, worse than life on board
the _Acushnet_. In the first place, Melville was ill. Not until three
months after his escape from Typee did he regain his normal strength.
And, as always, Melville looked back with regret upon leaving the life
he had so wanted to escape from while he was in the midst of it. “As
the land faded from my sight,” he says, “I was all alive to the change
in my condition. But how far short of our expectations is oftentimes
the fulfilment of the most ardent hopes. Safe aboard of a ship--so
long my earnest prayer--with home and friends once more in prospect,
I nevertheless felt weighed down with a melancholy that could not be
shaken off.” Melville felt he was leaving cannibalism forever--and the
departure shot a pang into his heart.
The ship’s company were a sorry lot: reduced by desertion from
thirty-two to twenty souls, and more than half of the remaining were
more or less unwell from a long sojourn in a dissipated port. Some
were wholly unfit for duty; one or two were dangerously ill. The rest
managed to stand their watch, though they could do little. The crew
was, for the most part, a typical whaling crew: “villains of all
nations and dyes; picked up in the lawless Spanish Main, and among the
savages of the islands.” The provisions, too, on board the _Julia_ were
notoriously bad, even for a whaler. Melville’s regret at leaving Typee
was not mere wanton sentimentality.
The captain was despised by all aboard. He was commonly called “The
Cabin Boy,” “Paper Jack,” “Miss Guy” and other descriptive titles.
Though sheepish looking, he was a man of still, timid cunning that did
not endear him to Melville.
The mate, John Jermin, was of the efficient race of short thick-set
men: bullet headed, with a fierce little squint out of one eye, and a
nose with a rakish tilt to one side. His was the art of knocking a man
down with irresistible good humour, so the very men he flogged loved
him like a brother. He had but one failing: he abhorred weak infusions,
and cleaved manfully to strong drink. He was never completely sober:
and when he was nearly drunk he was uncommonly obstreperous.
Jermin was master of every man aboard except the ship’s carpenter,--a
man so excessively ugly he went by the name of “Beauty.” As
ill-favoured as Beauty was in person, he was no less ugly in temper:
his face had soured his heart. Melville witnessed an encounter between
Jermin and Beauty: an encounter that showed up clearly the state of
affairs on board. While Beauty was thrashing Jermin in the forecastle,
the captain called down the scuttle: “Why, why, what’s all this about?
Mr. Jermin, Mr. Jermin--carpenter, carpenter: what are you doing down
there? Come on deck; come on deck.” In reply to this, Doctor Long Ghost
cried out in a squeak, “Ah! Miss Guy, is that you? Now, my dear, go
right home, or you’ll get hurt.” The captain dipped his head down the
scuttle to make answer, to receive, full in the face, the contents of a
tin of soaked biscuit and tea-leaves. Things were not well aboard the
_Julia_.
But it was Doctor Long Ghost--he who so mocked the captain--who
figures most largely in Melville’s history: a man remarkable both in
appearance and in personality. He was over six feet--a tower of bones,
with a bloodless complexion, fair hair and a pale unscrupulous grey
eye that twinkled occasionally with the very devil of mischief. At the
beginning of the cruise of the _Julia_, as ship’s doctor, he had lived
in the cabin with the captain. But once on a time they had got into a
dispute about politics, and the doctor, getting into a rage, had driven
his argument home with his fist, and left the captain on the floor,
literally silenced. The captain replied by shutting him up in his
state-room for ten days on a diet of bread and water. Upon his release
he went forward with his chests among the sailors where he was welcomed
as a good fellow and an injured man.
The early history of Doctor Long Ghost he kept to himself; but it was
Melville’s conviction that he had certainly at some time or other
spent money, drunk Burgundy, and associated with gentlemen. “He quoted
Virgil, and talked of Hobbes of Malmsbury, besides repeating poetry
by the canto, especially Hudibras.” In the most casual manner, too,
he could refer to an amour he had in Palermo, his lion hunting before
breakfast among the Kaffirs, and the quality of coffee he had drunk in
Muscat.
Melville was in no condition, physically, to engage in the ship’s
duties, so he and Doctor Long Ghost fraternised in the forecastle,
where they were treated by the crew as distinguished guests. There they
talked, played chess--with an outfit of their own manufacture--and
there Melville read the books of the Long Doctor, over and over again,
not omitting a long treatise on the scarlet fever.
At its best, the forecastle is never an ideal abode: but the forecastle
of the _Julia_--its bunks half wrecked, its filthy sailors’ pantry, and
its plague of rats and cockroaches--must have made the _Highlander_
seem as paradise in retrospect. The forecastle of the _Julia_,
Melville says, “looked like the hollow of an old tree going to decay.
In every direction the wood was damp and discoloured, and here and
there soft and porous. Moreover, it was hacked and hewed without
mercy, the cook frequently helping himself to splinters for kindling
wood.” The viciousness of the crew of the _Julia_, did not, of course,
perceptibly enhance the charms of the forecastle. Nor was Melville’s
estate made more enviable when the man in the bunk next to his went
wildly delirious. One night Melville was awakened from a vague dream of
horrors by something clammy resting on him: his neighbour, with a stark
stiff arm reached out into Melville’s bunk, had during the night died.
The crew rejoiced at his death.
For weeks the _Julia_ tacked about among the islands of the South
Seas. The captain was ill, and Jermin steered the _Julia_, to Tahiti,
to arrive off the island the moment that Admiral Du Petit-Thouars was
firing, from the _Reine Blanche_, a salute in honour of the treaty he
had just forced Pomare to sign.
But to the astonishment of the crew, Jermin kept the ship at sea,
fearing the desertion of all his men if he struck anchor. His purpose
was to set the sick captain ashore, and to resume the voyage of the
_Julia_ at once, to return to Tahiti after a certain period agreed
upon, to take the captain off. The crew were in no mood to view this
manœuvre with indifference. Melville and Long Ghost cautioned them
against the folly of immediate mutiny, and on the fly-leaf of an old
musty copy of _A History of the Most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies_, a
round-robin was indited, giving a statement of the crew’s grievances,
and concluding with the earnest hope that the consul would at once come
off and see how matters stood. Pritchard, the missionary consul, was at
that time in England; his place was temporarily filled by one Wilson,
son of the well-known missionary of that name, and no honour to his
ancestor. It did not promise well for the crew that Wilson was an old
friend of Captain Guy’s.
The round-robin was the prelude to iniquitous bullying and stupidity
on the part of Wilson, Jermin, and Captain Guy. To the crew, it seemed
that justice was poisoned at the fountain head. They gazed on the
bitter waters, did a stout menagerie prance, and raged into mutiny.
Then it was, after one of the men had all but succeeded in maliciously
running the _Julia_ straight upon a reef, that the good ship was
piloted into the harbour of Papeetee, and the crew--including Melville
and the Long Doctor, who were misjudged because of the company they
kept--were for five days and nights held in chains on board the _Reine
Blanche_. At the end of that time they were tried, one by one, before
a tribunal composed of Wilson and two elderly European residents.
Melville was examined last. One of the elderly gentlemen condescended
to take a paternal interest in Melville. “Come here, my young friend,”
he said; “I’m extremely sorry to see you associated with these bad
men; do you know what it will end in?” Melville was in no mood for
smug and salvationly solicitations. He had already declared that his
resolution with respect to the ship was unalterable: he stuck to this
resolution. Wilson thereupon pronounced the whole crew clean gone in
perversity, and steeped in abomination beyond the reach of clemency. He
then summoned a fat old native, Captain Bob--and a hearty old Bob he
proved--giving him directions to marshal the crew to a place of safe
keeping.
Along the Broom Road they were led: and to Melville, escaped from the
forecastle of the _Julia_ and the confined decks of the frigate, the
air breathed spices. “The tropical day was fast drawing to a close,”
he says; “and from where we were, the sun looked like a vast red fire
burning in the woodlands--its rays falling aslant through the endless
ranks of trees, and every leaf fringed with flame.”
About a mile from the village they came to the _Calabooza
Beretanee_--the English jail.
The jail was extremely romantic in appearance: a large oval native
house, with a dazzling white thatch, situated near a mountain stream
that, flowing from a verdant slope, spread itself upon a beach of small
sparkling shells, and then trickled into the sea. But the jail was ill
adapted for domestic comforts, the only piece of furniture being two
stout pieces of timber, about twenty feet in length, gouged to serve
as stocks. John La Farge, in his _Reminiscences of the South Seas_,
says: “We try to find, by the little river that ends our walk, on this
side of the old French fort, the calaboose where Melville was shut up.
There is no one to help us in our search; no one remembers anything.
Buildings occupy the spaces of woodland that Melville saw about him.
Nothing remains but the same charm of light and air which he, like all
others, has tried to describe and to bring back home in words. But the
beach is still as beautiful as if composed by Claude Lorraine.”
In this now-departed calaboose, Melville and the rest were kept in very
lenient captivity by Captain Bob. Captain Bob’s notion of discipline
was delightfully vague. He insensibly remitted his watchfulness,
and the prisoners were free to stroll further and further from the
Calabooza. After about two weeks--for days melted deceptively into each
other at Tahiti--the crew was again summoned before Wilson, again to
declare themselves unshaken in their obstinate refusal to sail again
with Captain Guy. So back to the Calabooza they were sent.
The English Missionaries left their cards at the Calabooza in the
shape of a package of tracts; three of the French priests--whom the
natives viewed, so Melville says, as “no better than diabolical
sorcerers”--called in person. One of the priests--called by Melville,
Father Murphy--discovered a compatriot among the crew, and celebrated
the discovery by sending a present of a basket of bread. Such was
the persuasion of the gift that, on Melville’s count, “we all turned
Catholics, and went to mass every morning, much to Captain Bob’s
consternation. He threatened to keep us in the stocks, if we did not
desist.”
After three weeks Wilson seems to have begun to suspect that it was not
remotely impossible that he was making a laughing stock of himself in
his futile attempt to break the mutineers into contrition. So off the
_Julia_ sailed, manned by a new crew. But before sailing, Jermin served
his old crew the good turn of having their chests sent ashore. And when
each was in possession of his sea-chest, the Calabooza was thronged
with Polynesians, each eager to take a _tayo_, or bosom friend.
Though technically still prisoners, Melville and his former shipmates
were allowed a long rope in their wanderings. Melville improved his
leisure by attending, each Sunday, the services held in the great
church which Pomare had built to be baptised in. In _Omoo_, Melville
gives a detailed account of a typical Sabbath, and then launches into
chapters of discussion upon the fruits of Christianity in Polynesia.
At church Melville had observed, among other puzzlingly incongruous
performances, a young Polynesian blade standing up in the congregation
in all the bravery of a striped calico shirt, with the skirts
rakishly adjusted over a pair of white sailor trousers, and hair well
anointed with cocoanut oil, ogling the girls with an air of supreme
satisfaction. And of those who ate of the bread-fruit of the Eucharist
in the morning, he knew several who were guilty of sad derelictions the
same night. Desiring, if possible, to find out what ideas of religion
were compatible with this behaviour, he and the Long Doctor called upon
three sister communicants one evening. While the doctor engaged the
two younger girls, Melville lounged on a mat with Ideea, the eldest,
dallying with her grass fan, and improving his knowledge of Tahitian.
“The occasion was well adapted to my purpose, and I began.
“‘Ah, Ideea, mickonaree oee?’ the same as drawling out--‘By the by,
Miss Ideea, do you belong to the church?’
“‘Yes, me mickonaree,’ was the reply.
“But the assertion was at once qualified by certain reservations; so
curious that I cannot forbear their relation.
“‘Mickonaree _ena_’ (church member _here_), exclaimed she, laying her
hand upon her mouth, and a strong emphasis on the adverb. In the same
way, and with similar exclamations, she touched her eyes and hands.
This done, her whole air changed in an instant; and she gave me to
understand, by unmistakable gestures, that in certain other respects
she was not exactly a ‘mickonaree.’ In short, Ideea was
“‘A sad good Christian at the heart--
A very heathen in the carnal part.’”
“The explanation terminated in a burst of laughter, in which all three
sisters joined; and for fear of looking silly, the doctor and myself.
As soon as good-breeding would permit, we took leave.”
It is Melville’s contention that the very traits in the Tahitians
which induced the London Missionary Society to regard them as the most
promising subjects for conversion, were, in fact, the most serious
obstruction to their ever being Christians. “An air of softness in
their manners, great apparent ingenuousness and docility, at first
misled; but these were the mere accompaniments of an indolence,
bodily and mental; a constitutional voluptuousness; and an aversion
to the least restraint; which, however fitted for the luxurious state
of nature, in the tropics, are the greatest possible hindrances to
the strict moralities of Christianity.” Of the Marquesans, Melville
says in _Typee_: “Better it will be for them to remain the happy and
innocent heathens and barbarians that they now are, than, like the
wretched inhabitants of the Sandwich islands, to enjoy the mere name
of Christians without experiencing any of the vital operations of true
religion, whilst, at the same time, they are made the victims of the
worst vices and evils of civilised life.”
Paul Gauguin, in his _Intimate Journals_, seems to share Melville’s
conviction that the Polynesians are disqualified by nature to
experience “any of the vital operations of the spirit.” In speaking of
the attempts of the missionaries to introduce marriage into Polynesia
he remarks cynically: “As they are going out of the church, the groom
says to the maid of honour, ‘How pretty you are!’ And the bride says to
the best man ‘How handsome you are!’ Very soon one couple moves off to
the right and another to the left, deep into the underbrush where, in
the shelter of the banana trees and before the Almighty, two marriages
take place instead of one. Monseigneur is satisfied, and says, ‘We are
beginning to civilise them.’”
The good intentions of the Missionaries Melville does not question. But
high faith and low intelligence is a dangerous if not uncommon mating
of qualities. “It matters not,” he says, “that the earlier labourers in
the work, although strictly conscientious, were, as a class, ignorant,
and in many cases, deplorably bigoted: such traits have, in some
degree, characterised the pioneers of all faith. And although in zeal
and disinterestedness, the missionaries now on the island are, perhaps,
inferior to their predecessors, they have, nevertheless, in their
own way, at least, laboured hard to make a Christian people of their
charge.”
As a result of this labour idolatry was done away with; the entire
Bible was translated into Tahitian; the morality of the islanders
was, on the whole, improved. These accomplishments Melville freely
admits. But in temporal felicity, “the Tahitians are far worse off
now than formerly; and although their circumstances, upon the whole,
are bettered by the missionaries, the benefits conferred by the
latter become utterly insignificant, when confronted with the vast
preponderance of evil brought by other means.” Melville found that
there was still at Tahiti freedom and indolence; torches brandished
in the woods at night; dances under the moon, and women decked with
flowers. But he also found the Missionaries intent upon the abolition
of the native amusements and customs--in their crowning efforts,
decking the women out in hats “said to have been first contrived and
recommended by the missionaries’ wives; a report which, I really trust,
is nothing but a scandal.” To Melville’s eyes, Tahiti was neither Pagan
nor Christian, but a bedraggled bastard cross between the vices of two
incompatible traditions. And in this blend he saw the promise of the
certain extinction of the Polynesians. The Polynesians themselves were
not blind to the doom upon them. Melville had heard the aged Tahitians
singing in a low sad tone a song which ran: “The palm trees shall grow,
the coral shall spread, but man shall cease.”
[Illustration: FIRST HOME OF THE PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES IN TAHITI
From a report of The London Missionary Society, published in 1799.]
[Illustration: THE FLEET OF TAHITI
From an engraving after Hodges, the artist who accompanied Captain Cook
to the South Seas.]
Melville’s plea was that Christendom treat Polynesia with
reasonableness, and Christian charity: perhaps the two rarest qualities
in the world. His plea was not without results; he unloosed upon
himself exhibitions of venom of the whole-hearted sort that enamour
a misanthrope to life. _The Living Age_ (Vol. XXVII) reprinted from
the _Eclectic Review_ a tribute which began: “Falsehood is a thing of
almost invincible courage; overthrow it to-day, and with freshened
vigour it will return to the lists to-morrow. _Omoo_ illustrates this
fact. We were under the illusion that the abettors of infidelity
and the partisans of popery had been put to shame by the repeated
refutation and exposure of their slanders against the Protestant
Missions in Polynesia; but Mr. Melville’s production proves that shame
is a virtue with which these gentry are totally unacquainted, and that
they are resharpening their missiles for another onset.” This review
then made it its object “to show that his statements respecting the
Protestant Mission in Tahiti are perversions of the truth--that
he is guilty of deliberate and elaborate misrepresentation, and ...
that he is a prejudiced, incompetent, and truthless witness.” It was
taken for granted that Melville was guilty of the heinous crime of
being a Catholic. From this presumption it was easy to understand that
Melville’s plea for sweetness and light was but the vicious ravings of
a man “foiled and disappointed by the rejection of Mariolatry and the
worship of wafers and of images, and of dead men by the Bible-reading
Tahitians.” By a convincing--if not cogent--technique of controversy,
Melville’s evidence was impugned by a discounting of the morals of the
witness: a Catholic, and a disseminator of the “worst of European vices
and the most dreadful of European diseases.”
Melville was twenty-eight years old when he Quixotically championed
the heathen in the name of a transcendental charity which he believed
to be Christian. Amiable Protestant brethren undertook to disabuse him
of his naïve belief that the guardians of the faith of Christendom
invariably regulate their conduct in the spirit of Christ. As Melville
grew in wisdom he grew in disillusion: and his early tilt at the
London Missionary Society contributed to his rapid growth. At the
age of thirty-three he wrote in _Pierre_--a book planned to show the
impracticability of virtue--that “God’s truth is one thing, and man’s
truth another.” He then maintained that the history of Christendom for
the last 1800 years showed that “in spite of all the maxims of Christ,
that history is as full of blood, violence, wrong, and iniquity of
every kind, as any previous portion of the world’s story.” He says in
_Clarel_:
“The world is portioned out, believe:
The good have but a patch at best,
The wise their corner; for the rest--
Malice divides with ignorance.”
Melville points out that Christ’s teachings seemed folly to the Jews
because Christ carried Heaven’s time in Jerusalem, while the Jews
carried Jerusalem time there. “Did He not expressly say ‘My wisdom is
not of this world?’ Whatever is really peculiar in the wisdom of Christ
seems precisely the same folly to-day as it did 1850 years ago.” In
_Clarel_, he goes further, and calls the world
“a den
Worse for Christ’s coming, since His love
(Perverted) did but venom prove.”
Though such a heretical idea was, to the Protestant brethren, of
course, clean gone on the farthest side of damnation, yet were Melville
and these same brethren working upon an identical major premise: each
was righteously convinced that he was about his Father’s business--each
was attempting to rout the other in the name of Christ. The brethren
rode forth in the surety of triumph; Melville retired within himself
convinced that defeat was not refutation, and that his way had been,
withal, the way of Heavenly Truth. And since his way bore but bitter
fruit, he shook the dust of the earth from his feet, convinced that
such soil was designed to nourish only iniquity. “Where is the earnest
and righteous philosopher,” he asks, framing his question to include
himself in that glorious minority, “who looking right and left, and up
and down through all the ages of the world, the present included; where
is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a
sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of,
He is not Lord of this: for else this world would seem to give Him the
lie; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways
of Heaven.” In this world, he grew to feel, a wise man resigns himself
to the world’s ways. “When we go to heaven,” he taught, “it will be
quite another thing. There, we can freely turn the left cheek, because
the right cheek will never be smitten. There they can freely give all
to the poor, for _there_ there will be no poor to give to.” And this,
he contended, was a salutary doctrine: “I hold up a practical virtue to
the vicious; and interfere not with the eternal truth, that, sooner or
later, downright vice is downright woe.” His milk of human kindness was
not sweetened by the thunder of the Protestant brethren.
Resigned to the insight that while on earth no wise man aims at heaven
except by a virtuous expediency, he accepted the London Missionary
Society as one of the evils inherent in the universe, and leaving it
to its own fate, looked prophetically forward to the Inter-Church
World Movement. In _The Confidence Man_ he makes one of the characters
say: “Missions I would quicken with the Wall Street spirit. For if,
confessedly, certain spiritual ends are to be gained but through
the auxiliary agency of worldly means, then, to the surer gaining
of such spiritual ends, the example of worldly policy in worldly
projects should not by spiritual projectors be slighted. In brief, the
conversion of the heathen, so far, at least, as depending on human
effort, would, by the world’s charity, be let out on contract. So much
by bid for converting India, so much for Borneo, so much for Africa.
You see, this doing good in the world by driblets is just nothing. I
am for doing good in the world with a will. I am for doing good to the
world once for all, and having done with it. Do but think of the eddies
and maelstroms of pagans in China. People here have no conception of
it. Of a frosty morning in Hong Kong, pauper pagans are found dead
in the streets like so many nipped peas in a bin of peas. To be an
immortal being in China is no more distinction than to be a snow-flake
in a snow-squall. What are a score or two of missionaries to such
a people? I am for sending ten thousand missionaries in a body and
converting the Chinese _en masse_ within six months of the debarkation.
The thing is then done, and turn to something else.” And in _Clarel_:
“But preach and work:
You’ll civilise the barbarous Turk--
Nay, all the East may reconcile:
That done, let Mammon take the wings of even,
And mount and civilise the saints in heaven.”
But when Melville was in Tahiti he harboured less emancipated notions
than he later achieved. He was then to all outward seeming little
better than a beach-comber, disciplined for his participation in a
mutiny he and the Long Doctor had ineffectively tried to prevent, and
in the end abandoned by his ecclesiastical guardians to drift among the
natives of Tahiti, and to find his way back home any way he could.
The authorities at Tahiti left the party at the Calabooza to its own
disintegration: a sore on the island cured not by surgery but by
neglect. Gradually the mutineers melted out of sight.
With the Long Doctor, Melville sailed across to the neighbouring island
of Imeeo, there to hire themselves out as field-labourers to two
South Sea planters: one a tall, robust Yankee, born in the backwoods
of Maine, sallow, and with a long face; the other, a short florid
little Cockney. This strange pair had cleared about thirty acres
in the isolation of the wild valley of Martair, where they worked
with invincible energy, and struggling against all odds to farm in
Polynesia, and with Heaven knows what ideas of making a fortune on
their crude plantation.
Melville had tried farming in Pittsfield, and he liked the labour
even less in Polynesia than he did in Christendom. The Long Doctor
throve not at all hoeing potatoes under a tropical sun, all the while
saying masses as he watered the furrows with his sweat. Both Melville
and the Long Doctor enjoyed the hunt they took in the wilds of the
mountains: but back to the mosquitoes, the sweet-potatoes, and the
hardships of agriculture, they decided to launch forth again upon the
luck of the open road. What clothes they had were useless rags. So
barefooted, and garbed like comic opera brigands or mendicant grandees,
they started out on a tour of discovery around the island of Imeeo.
After about ten days of pleasant adventure and hospitality from the
natives they arrived at Partoowye to be accepted into the household of
an aristocratic-looking islander named Jeremiah Po-Po, and his wife
Arfretee. This was a household of converts: “Po-Po was, in truth, a
Christian,” Melville says: “the only one, Arfretee excepted, whom I
personally knew to be such, among all the natives of Polynesia.”
Arfretee fitted out Melville and the Doctor each with a new sailor
frock and a pair of trousers: and after a bath, a pleasant dinner, and
a nap, they came forth like a couple of bridegrooms.
Melville was in Partoowye, as guest of Po-Po, for about five weeks.
At that time it was believed that Queen Pomare--who was then in poor
health and spirits, and living in retirement in Partoowye--entertained
some idea of making a stand against the French. In this event, she
would, of course, be glad to enlist all the foreigners she could.
Melville and the Long Doctor played with the idea of being used by
Pomare as officers, should she take to warlike measures. But in this
scheme they won little encouragement. For though Pomare had, previous
to her misfortunes, admitted to her levees the humblest sailor who
cared to attend upon Majesty, she was, in her eclipse, averse to
receiving calls.
Shut off from an immediate prospect of interviewing Pomare, Melville
improved his time by studying the native life, and by visiting a whaler
in the harbour--the _Leviathan_--taking the precaution to secure
himself a bunk in the forecastle should he fail of a four-poster at
Court. His heart warmed to the _Leviathan_ after his first visit of
inspection on board. “Like all large, comfortable old whalers, she had
a sort of motherly look:--broad in the beam, flush decks, and four
chubby boats hanging at her breast.” The food, too, was promising. “My
sheath-knife never cut into better sea-beef. The bread, too, was hard,
and dry, and brittle as glass; and there was plenty of both.” The mate
had a likeable voice: “hearing it was as good as a look at his face.”
But Melville still clung to the hope of winning the ear of Pomare.
Although there was, Melville says, “a good deal of waggish comrades’
nonsense” about his and Long Ghost’s expectation of court preferment,
“we nevertheless really thought that something to our advantage might
turn up in that quarter.”
Pomare was then upward of thirty years of age; twice stormily married;
and a good sad Christian again,--after lapses into excommunication;
she eked out her royal exchequer by going into the laundry business,
publicly soliciting, by her agents, the washing of the linen belonging
to the officers of ships touching in her harbours. Her English sister,
Queen Victoria, had sent her a very showy but uneasy headdress--a
crown. Having no idea of reserving so pretty a bauble for coronation
days, which came so seldom, her majesty sported it whenever she
appeared in public. To show her familiarity with European customs, she
touched it to all foreigners of distinction--whaling captains and the
like--whom she happened to meet in her evening walk on the Broom Road.
Melville discovered among Pomare’s retinue a Marquesan warrior,
Marbonna,--a wild heathen who scorned the vices and follies of the
Christian court of Tahiti and the degeneracy of the people among whom
fortune had thrown him. Through the instrumentality of Marbonna, who
officiated as nurse of Pomare’s children, Melville and the Doctor at
last found themselves admitted into the palace of Pomare.
“The whole scene was a strange one,” Melville says; “but what most
excited our surprise was the incongruous assemblage of the most costly
objects from all quarters of the globe. Superb writing-desks of
rosewood, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl; decanters and goblets
of cut glass; embossed volumes of plates; gilded candelabras; sets of
globes and mathematical instruments; laced hats and sumptuous garments
of all sorts were strewn about among greasy calabashes half-filled with
_poce_, rolls of old tappa and matting, paddles and fish-spears. A
folio volume of Hogarth lay open, with a cocoanut shell of some musty
preparation capsized among the miscellaneous furniture of the Rake’s
apartment.”
While Melville and the Doctor were amusing themselves in this museum of
curiosities, Pomare entered, unconscious of the presence of intruders.
“She wore a loose gown of blue silk, with two rich shawls, one red, the
other yellow, tied about her neck. Her royal majesty was barefooted.
She was about the ordinary size, rather matronly; her features not very
handsome; her mouth voluptuous; but there was a care-worn expression
in her face, probably attributable to her late misfortunes. From her
appearance, one would judge her about forty; but she is not so old. As
the Queen approached one of the recesses, her attendants hurried up,
escorted her in, and smoothed the mats on which she at last reclined.
Two girls soon appeared, carrying their mistress’ repast; and then,
surrounded by cut glass and porcelain, and jars of sweetmeats and
confections, Pomare Vahinee I., the titular Queen of Tahiti, ate fish
and _poee_ out of her native calabashes, disdaining either knife or
spoon.”
The interview between the Queen and her visitors was brief. Long Ghost
strode up bravely to introduce himself. The natives surrounding the
Queen screamed. Pomare looked up, surprised and offended, and waved the
Long Doctor and Melville out of the house. Though Melville was later to
view a South American King, was to win the smile of Victoria and meet
Lincoln, Pomare was the first and only Polynesian Queen he ever saw.
Disappointed at going to court, feeling that they could no longer
trespass on Po-Po’s hospitality, “and then, weary somewhat of life in
Imeeo, like all sailors ashore, I at last pined for the billows.”
The Captain of the _Leviathan_--a native of Martha’s Vineyard--was
unwilling without persuasion to accept Melville, however. What with
Melville’s associations with Long Ghost, and the British sailor’s frock
Arfretee had given him, the Captain suspected Melville of being from
Sydney: a suspicion not intended as flattery. Unaccompanied by Long
Ghost, Melville finally interviewed the Captain, to find that worthy
mellowed at the close of a spirituous dinner. “After looking me in the
eye for some time, and by so doing, revealing an obvious unsteadiness
in his own visual organs, he begged me to reach forth my arm. I did so;
wondering what on earth that useful member had to do with the matter
in hand. He placed his fingers on my wrist; and holding them there for
a moment, sprang to his feet; and, with much enthusiasm, pronounced me
a Yankee, every beat of my pulse.” Another bottle was called, which
the captain summarily beheaded with the stroke of a knife, commanding
Melville to drain it to the bottom. “He then told me that if I would
come on board his vessel the following morning, I would find the ship’s
articles on the cabin transom.... So, hurrah for the coast of Japan!
Thither the ship was bound.”
The Long Doctor, on second thought, decided to eschew the sea for a
space. A last afternoon was spent with Po-Po and his family. “About
nightfall, we broke away from the generous-hearted household and
hurried down to the water. It was a mad, merry night among the sailors.
An hour or two after midnight, everything was noiseless; but when the
first streak of dawn showed itself over the mountains, a sharp voice
hailed the forecastle, and ordered the ship unmoored. The anchors came
up cheerily; the sails were soon set; and with the early breath of the
tropical morning, fresh and fragrant from the hillsides, we slowly
glided down the bay, and we swept through the opening in the reef.”
Melville never saw or heard from Long Ghost after their parting on that
morning.