Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/213

 he would send for me, make me a chief over some district, and give me three of his daughters for wives.

I did not feel that I could accept the king’s offer, and so fulfilled my commission and returned to the ship.

A FIJI BEAUTY, ONE OF TANOA’S DAUGHTERS.

King Tanoa’s canoe was a very rapid sailor. It was a single canoe, over a hundred feet long, with a very large  out-rigger. About midship was built a hurricane deck, the place of honor, the king’s quarter-deck. Her crew, numbering about sixty, were nearly all Tonga men. She