Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/103

 he shipped on board of a whaler. They had had extraordinarily good luck, for in twenty months they were full of oil; but their rations and treatment were so bad  that he, with several others, left the ship, and he had  been on this island ever since — sixteen years. He had married a "Devil" chief’s daughter, and had  thirteen little ones. In 1875 I heard that Mr. French was still living.

A whaler’s crew are not paid by the month, but have a lay; that is to say, the captain has one barrel out of every  thirty, and Jack before the mast one out of about every  five hundred. At the end of a voyage, through much abuse and tyrannical treatment by the officers of the ship,  Jack before the mast is often fairly driven from the ship. This is called desertion. Then his lay falls to the owners, if the captain does not contrive some way or other to secure it.

In the Christian villages we saw their churches and schoolhouses. The missionaries here have their printing-press, and had translated and printed most of the Bible into the native language. Many of the native women dress in loose gingham or calico frocks, and the  men wear a shirt or a pair of trousers, and sometimes  both. Both sexes wear their hair short and sprinkle it with coral lime to destroy the vermin. This causes their hair to turn a carroty red. Sunday is strictly observed here. A native will not so much as get you a cocoanut upon that day. I do not remember ever having been in a meeting where the people were more quiet and attentive to the preaching than here among the missionaries. Here was the old pioneer, the Rev. John Williams, the