Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/211

 islands of the Pacific that the little papalangis (white people) were little spirits, and that their homes were in  the skies; that they were subject to one great spirit,  and that the ships ascended to and descended from the  skies when out of sight of their islands.

One afternoon I was ordered into the dinky, a small shell of a boat, with lead line and compass. I was to pull to a point about a mile ahead of the ship, run off  thirty fathoms with the lead line in a nor’easterly direction from a large tree at the back of a small hill, stick  the boat-hook into the ground, fasten a comet, or signal,  to the upper end, and return in an hour.

Obeying orders, I doubled the point and took a short cruise up the beach, out of sight of the ships. While strolling along I suddenly fell in with Tanoa, the king  of the island, and a part of his crew. His large war- canoe was at the edge of the reef. He came toward me, took my right hand and rubbed it across his nose — this  being his mode of salutation. Then he rolled up the sleeve of my frock to the shoulder; took hold of me by  the wrist and shoulder, opened his big mouth, grated his  beautiful white teeth, smacked his lips, and said, "Mite  kuai," "What a sweet morsel." Then, in a few minutes, he commenced to spit terribly, pressed his hands on his  stomach, as though he felt sick, and then made up an  awful face and cried out, "Oui miti," "No good, bad." He then in very broken English, with many signs and gestures, and in a joking kind of way — though I think  he meant it — pointed to the mountains, the horizon, and  the sky, signifying that I should go to the mountains and  remain there until the ships had returned home, when