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- 3658
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.149Z
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- 3587
- text
- CHAPTER XXVII.
A GLANCE AT PAPEETEE—WE ARE SENT ABOARD THE FRIGATE
The village of Papeetee struck us all very pleasantly. Lying in a
semicircle round the bay, the tasteful mansions of the chiefs and
foreign residents impart an air of tropical elegance, heightened by the
palm-trees waving here and there, and the deep-green groves of the
Bread-Fruit in the background. The squalid huts of the common people
are out of sight, and there is nothing to mar the prospect.
All round the water extends a wide, smooth beach of mixed pebbles and
fragments of coral. This forms the thoroughfare of the village; the
handsomest houses all facing it—the fluctuation of the tides being so
inconsiderable that they cause no inconvenience.
The Pritchard residence—a fine large building—occupies a site on one
side of the bay: a green lawn slopes off to the sea: and in front waves
the English flag. Across the water, the tricolour also, and the stars
and stripes, distinguish the residences of the other consuls.
What greatly added to the picturesqueness of the bay at this time was
the condemned hull of a large ship, which, at the farther end of the
harbour, lay bilged upon the beach, its stern settled low in the water,
and the other end high and dry. From where we lay, the trees behind
seemed to lock their leafy boughs over its bowsprit; which, from its
position, looked nearly upright.
She was an American whaler, a very old craft. Having sprung a leak at
sea, she had made all sail for the island, to heave down for repairs.
Found utterly unseaworthy, however, her oil was taken out and sent home
in another vessel; the hull was then stripped and sold for a trifle.
Before leaving Tahiti, I had the curiosity to go over this poor old
ship, thus stranded on a strange shore. What were my emotions, when I
saw upon her stern the name of a small town on the river Hudson! She
was from the noble stream on whose banks I was born; in whose waters I
had a hundred times bathed. In an instant, palm-trees and elms—canoes
and skiffs—church spires and bamboos—all mingled in one vision of the
present and the past.
But we must not leave little Jule.
At last the wishes of many were gratified; and like an aeronaut’s
grapnel, her rusty little anchor was caught in the coral groves at the
bottom of Papeetee Bay. This must have been more than forty days after
leaving the Marquesas.
The sails were yet unfurled, when a boat came alongside with our
esteemed friend Wilson, the consul.
“How’s this, how’s this, Mr. Jermin?” he began, looking very savage as
he touched the deck. “What brings you in without orders?”
“You did not come off to us, as you promised, sir; and there was no
hanging on longer with nobody to work the ship,” was the blunt reply.
“So the infernal scoundrels held out—did they? Very good; I’ll make
them sweat for it,” and he eyed the scowling men with unwonted
intrepidity. The truth was, he felt safer now, than when outside the
reef.
“Muster the mutineers on the quarter-deck,” he continued. “Drive them
aft, sir, sick and well: I have a word to say to them.”
“Now, men,” said he, “you think it’s all well with you, I suppose. You
wished the ship in, and here she is. Captain Guy’s ashore, and you
think you must go too: but we’ll see about that—I’ll miserably
disappoint you.” (These last were his very words.) “Mr. Jermin, call
off the names of those who did not refuse duty, and let them go over to
the starboard side.”
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