Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/214

 was ornamented with over two thousand very beautiful cypræa, Ovula shells. When this canoe was launched, eighty of his victims were clubbed that she might be  launched over their bodies. He used to take great pride and pleasure in running down smaller canoes and drowning their occupants. It was said that King Tanoa was the greatest cannibal that ever lived. He was, in every sense of the word, "King of the Cannibal Islands."

The habits and customs of these Fijians were in the highest degree interesting.

On board the Flying Fish, or Kai Nite, Midshipman Sinclair outrageously abused one of the crew, William  Smith, for some neglect of duty. He first denounced him in the most abusive and aggravating terms, and then  administered several severe blows with a rope’s-end. This was more than Jack before the mast could stand. Smith sprang at him, seized him in his arms, and jumped overboard. Smith was unarmed, and was drowned; Sinclair was armed with a dirk, and escaped by swimming to the fore-channels and climbing on board.

We found old red-headed Paddy Connell in rather ill health, but happy in having had, during our absence,  an addition to his family, another "young brat of a boy." This was the forty-ninth child, and now his prayer was that he might live to see the fiftieth.

The old chief of the town, Tui Levuka, spent the most of his time at home with his wives, muskets, and junk- bottles. The natives here seemed to have a sort of mania for collections of bottles. A few weeks before we arrived, the Currency Lass, a trading schooner, had visited this port and disposed of several hampers of bottles.