the corpse had slid overboard, remarked, “Well, he’s dead and buried,” whereat the cooper muttered, “He’s dead, but he ain’t what I call buried.” I don’t think the Captain omitted the burial service through any indifference, but rather from a sensitiveness to officiate in any such semi-clerical fashion.
Some rocks not far from our anchorage were seen covered at early dawn every morning with thousands of large black sea-birds. They were thickly crowded together and all silent and immovable, until apparently they had finished some Quaker form of morning devotion, when they commenced flying off, not all at once, but in series of long straggling flocks. In similar silence and order they would return at night from some far-off locality. Never during all the months of our stay did we hear a sound from them. Morning after morning with the earliest light this raven-colored host were ever on their chosen rocks, brooding as it were-ere their flight over some solemnity peculiar to their existence.
The silent birds gone, there came regularly before sunrise a wonderful mirage. Far away and low down in the distant seaward horizon there seemed vaguely shadowed forth long lines one above and behind the other of towers, walls, battlements, spires and the irregular outline of some weird ancient city. These shapes, seemingly motionless, in reality changed from minute to minute, yet the movement was not perceptible. Now it was a long level wall with an occasional watch-tower. Then the walls grew higher and higher, and there towered a lofty, round, cone shaped structure, with a suggestion of a flight of circular steps on the outside, as in the old-fashioned Sunday school-books was seen pictured the tower of Babel. It would reveal itself in varying degrees of distinctness. But when the eye, attracted by some other feature of the spectacle, turned again in its direction it was gone. A haze of purple covered as with a gauzy veil these beautiful morning panoramas. Gazed at steadily it seemed as a dream realized in one’s waking moments. It was sometimes for me a sight fraught with dangerous fascination, and often as I looked upon it, forgetting all else for the moment, have I been recalled disagreeably to my mundane sphere of slops, soot, smoke and dishrags, as I heard the ominous sizzle and splutter of the coffee boiling over, or scented on the morning air that peculiar odor, full of alarm to the culinary soul, the odor of burning bread in the oven. ’Tis ever thus that the fondest illusions of life are rudely broken in upon by the vulgar necessities and accidents of earthly existence.
There were ten Sandwich Islanders in the forecastle of the Henry, one big Jamaica negro, who acted as a sort of leader for them, and no white men. These Kanakas were docile, well-behaved, could read in their own language, had in their possession many books printed in their own tongue, and all seemed to invest their spare cash in clothes. They liked fish, very slightly salted, which they would eat without further cooking, plenty of bread, and, above all things, molasses. Molasses would tempt any of these Islanders from the path of rectitude. When not at work they were either talking or singing. Singly or in groups of two or three they would sit about the deck at night performing a monotonous chant of a few notes. This they would keep up for hours. That chant got into my head thirty-three years ago and it has never got out since. Change of scene, of life, of association, increase of weight, more morality, more regular habits, marriage, all have made no difference. That Kanaka chant, so many thousand times heard on the Southern Californian coast, will sometimes strike up of its own accord, until it tires me out with its imagined ceaseless repetition. It’s there, a permanent fixture. Recollection will wake it up.
So unceasing was the gabble of these Kanakas that one day I asked Jake, the negro boat-steerer, who understood their language, what they found to talk so much about. “Oh, dey talk about anyting,” said he; “dey talk a whole day ’bout a pin.” Whereat I retired to my maritime scrubbery and kitchen and varied my usual occupation midst my pots, pans, and undeveloped plum duff’s with wondering if the simpler, or, as we term them, the inferior races of men are not more inclined to express their thoughts audibly than the superior. I do not think an idea could present itself to a Kanaka without his talking it out to somebody.
But some of these simple children of the Pacific isles used to pilfer hot biscuits from my galley when I was absent. In vain I set hot stove-covers in front of the door for them to step on and burn their bare feet. I burned myself on the iron I had prepared for my recently civilized, if not converted, heathen brother. Both the superior and inferior races often went barefooted on the Henry while in the lower latitudes.
At times, leaving a portion of the crew at the St. Bartholomew’s bay station to collect and cure abalone, the schooner cruised about the coast for sea elephant. Not far from the bay are the islands of Cedros (or Cedars), Natividad and some others. The first we saw of Cedros was her tree covered mountain tops floating, as it were, in the air above us on a sea of fog. This lifting, we were boarded by a boat containing two men. They proved to be two Robinson Crusoes, by name Miller and Whitney, who had been alone on the island nearly six months. They, with others, had fitted out in San Francisco a joint stock vessel and were left with a supply of provisions on Cedros to seal. Their vessel was long overdue, their provisions down to the last pound of biscuits, and they were living largely on fish and venison, for though Cedros is many miles from the main land, deer have got there somehow, as well as rattlesnakes. Their vessel never did return, for their Captain ran away with her and sold her in some South American port. Miller and Whitney joined our crew and made the remainder of the voyage with us. They brought on board all their worldly goods in two small trunks; also, a kettleful of boiled venison, a treat which they were very glad to exchange for some long coveted salt pork. They reported that a “stinker” was lying among the rocks ashore. A “stinker” in whaleman’s parlance is a dead whale. In giving things names a whaleman is largely influenced by their most prominent traits or qualities, and the odorous activity of a dead whale can be felt for miles. They told us, also, that they had nineteen barrels of seal oil stored on the island of Natividad. Natividad is but a bleached topped, guano covered rock. We sailed thither but found no oil. The Captain who had stolen their vessel also included the oil. Miller and Whitney proved very useful men. Whitney was a powerful talker. Miller never spoke unless under compulsion. Whether in their six months of Cedros isolation such a pair had been well mated is a matter on which there may be variance of opinion. Perhaps from a colloquial standpoint some if not many long married men can best tell. Miller was a Vermonter, and had spent seventeen years of his life roaming about among seldom visited South Sea islands. Could his tongue have been permanently loosened and his brain stimulated to conversational activity, his might have been a most interesting story. Once in a great while there came from him a slight shower of sentences and facts which fell gratefully on our parched ears, but as a rule the verbal drought was chronic. He had an irritating fashion also of intonating the first portions of his sentences in an audible key and then dying away almost to a whisper. This, when the tale was interesting, proved maddening to his hearers. He spoke once of living on an island whose natives were almost white, and the women well-formed and finer looking than any of the Polynesian race he had ever seen. Polygamy was not practised; they were devoted to one wife; and their life, cleanliness and manners, as he described them, made, with the addition of a little of one’s own imagination, a pleasing picture. Miller’s greatest use to mankind lay in his hands, in which all his brain power concentrated instead of his tongue. From splicing a cable to skinning a seal, he was an ultra proficient. Others might tell how and tell well, but Miller did it. Talking seemed to fatigue him. Every sentence ere completed fell in a sort of a swoon.
In St. Bartholomew’s, alias Turtle, Bay, we lay four months, taking abalones. All hands were called every morning at four o’clock. Breakfast was quickly dispatched, their noon lunch prepared, and everybody save myself was away from the vessel by five. That was the last I saw of them until sunset, and I was very glad to be rid of the whole gang and be left alone with my own thoughts, pots, pans, and kettles. The abalone clings to the surf washed rocks by suction. It has but one outer shell. San Francisco is very familiar with their prismatic hues inside, and the same outside when ground and polished. Heaps of those shells, three feet in height and bleached to a dead white by the sun, lay on the beaches about us. Of unbleached and lively hued shells we took on board several tons. They were sent to Europe, and there used for inlaid work. The live abalone must be pried off the rock with stout iron chisels or wedges. It was rough work collecting them from the rocky ledges
