Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/193

Rh the craft. But of the ill matched and miscellaneous materials, and with their entire ignorance of shipbuilding, nothing whatever could be made. The king then sent word to the sailors to come themselves and make the ship; but without proper tools, and with the timbers on hand, even the white men could do nothing, or make any sort of seaworthy craft. They worked, therefore, only long enough to make a good demonstration of the of the futility of the attempt, and then stopped.

By this the natives were much disappointed, and became moody and uncommunicative, while the sailors resumed their occupation of scanning the horizon from day to day in hopes of sighting a sail. When, however, it became apparent to the islanders that the ship could not be constructed out of timbers, they proposed to make a very large canoe in their own way, out of the biggest tree on all the island of Pelew, and thus deliver the seabound Americans and get the ransom of rifles. This was more encouraging and the sailors readily agreed. The king appointed a day of feasting, and then gave the command to fell a great breadfruit tree that had been growing from almost immemorial times, and overhung the cliff that sloped to the lagoon. This was at length felled, but unluckily, and greatly to the disappointment of the natives, the huge trunk, which was about nine feet in diameter, and probably unsound, was split into several pieces as it pitched over the bluff. Following this new disappointment the natives again sulked, and the sailors had no other hope but in watching the horizon.

Months passed by. The king, however, was still captivated with the idea of getting rifles in return for his white refugees, and at length said that in the interior of the island there was another tree nearly as large as the big one, and probably sounder. Should they make a canoe out of this for the Americans? This was at once