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- 4243
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.149Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 4168
- text
- and I, who lay side by side, thinking the occasion better adapted to
meditation, kept pretty silent; and, before long, the rest ceased
conversing, and, wearied with loss of rest on board the frigate, were
soon sound asleep.
After sliding from one reverie into another, I started, and gave the
doctor a pinch. He was dreaming, however; and, resolved to follow his
example, I troubled him no more.
How the rest managed, I know not; but for my own part, I found it very
hard to get to sleep. The consciousness of having one’s foot pinned;
and the impossibility of getting it anywhere else than just where it
was, was most distressing.
But this was not all: there was no way of lying but straight on your
back; unless, to be sure, one’s limb went round and round in the ankle,
like a swivel. Upon getting into a sort of doze, it was no wonder this
uneasy posture gave me the nightmare. Under the delusion that I was
about some gymnastics or other, I gave my unfortunate member such a
twitch that I started up with the idea that someone was dragging the
stocks away.
Captain Bob and his friends lived in a little hamlet hard by; and when
morning showed in the East, the old gentleman came forth from that
direction likewise, emerging from a grove, and saluting us loudly as he
approached.
Finding everybody awake, he set us at liberty; and, leading us down to
the stream, ordered every man to strip and bathe.
“All han’s, my boy, hanna-hanna, wash!” he cried. Bob was a linguist,
and had been to sea in his day, as he many a time afterwards told us.
At this moment, we were all alone with him; and it would have been the
easiest thing in the world to have given him the slip; but he seemed to
have no idea of such a thing; treating us so frankly and cordially,
indeed, that even had we thought of running, we should have been
ashamed of attempting it. He very well knew, nevertheless (as we
ourselves were not slow in finding out), that, for various reasons, any
attempt of the kind, without some previously arranged plan for leaving
the island, would be certain to fail.
As Bob was a rare one every way, I must give some account of him. There
was a good deal of “personal appearance” about him; in short, he was a
corpulent giant, over six feet in height, and literally as big round as
a hogshead. The enormous bulk of some of the Tahitians has been
frequently spoken of by voyagers.
Beside being the English consul’s jailer, as it were, he carried on a
little Tahitian farming; that is to say, he owned several groves of the
bread-fruit and palm, and never hindered their growing. Close by was a
“taro” patch of his which he occasionally visited.
Bob seldom disposed of the produce of his lands; it was all needed for
domestic consumption. Indeed, for gormandizing, I would have matched
him against any three common-council men at a civic feast.
A friend of Bob’s told me that, owing to his voraciousness, his visits
to other parts of the island were much dreaded; for, according to
Tahitian customs, hospitality without charge is enjoined upon everyone;
and though it is reciprocal in most cases, in Bob’s it was almost out
of the question. The damage done to a native larder in one of his
morning calls was more than could be made good by his entertainer’s
spending the holidays with them.
The old man, as I have hinted, had, once upon a time, been a cruise or
two in a whaling-vessel; and, therefore, he prided himself upon his
English. Having acquired what he knew of it in the forecastle, he
talked little else than sailor phrases, which sounded whimsically
enough.
I asked him one day how old he was. “Olee?” he exclaimed, looking very
profound in consequence of thoroughly understanding so subtile a
question—“Oh! very olee—’tousand ’ear—more—big man when Capin Tootee
(Captain Cook) heavey in sight.” (In sea parlance, came into view.)
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