Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/102

 flavor than the cultivated ones, — at any rate, they are larger.

On our way back to the ship we came to one of the "Devils’" villages. Near it was a fine, stately tree. It had been stripped of its branches except at its top. It was timbered in at its base after the fashion of the hull of a ship. This tree served as a mast; a small cocoanut tree made a bowsprit; another, a rudder; blocks of coral answered  for ballast, while vines, creepers, and rattans served as  her rigging. This Papalangi ship, as the natives called her, afforded them a great deal of amusement and pastime. There were a great number of young natives, heathen or devils, as you choose to call them, playing  and having a jolly time with her.

After our return to the ship, on going down to the berth deck, Elijah King, a Boston boy, called me by name. On looking round I saw him and another man whom I took for a native. The latter had very long hair and whiskers and was tattooed from head to foot. He had nothing on but the mora, or girdle. He looked wild and savage, though very intelligent. They were sitting on a mess-chest talking, others of the crew round them listening. King asked me where I was born. I said on Roxbury Neck. At once the stranger seized me and set me on his knee, while the big tears rolled down his cheeks. He said that I had sat upon his knee when a child, before my  father left home. I told him I had no remembrance of my father. It was always mother, mother, mother with me. This man’s name was Daniel French, and he was born in Roxbury. He said his relatives lived in the western part of the town, and that he was in ill health when