Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/228

 CHAPTER XIV.

daylight on the morning of the 23d of September we made Oahu, one of the Sandwich Islands, and about  eight o’clock entered the harbor of Honolulu. A couple of small hawsers were run out from the starboard bow,  and these were seized by several hundred natives, men,  women, and children, who were on the reef, up to their  necks in water, and very soon the ship was warped over  the bar and into port, amid such shouting and singing  that it seemed as though bedlam had broken loose. All Honolulu, including its land-sharks, was at the waterside  and joined in the shouting and cheering. It was not the novelty that created the excitement, for the arrival of a  man-of-war, in their port, was no uncommon thing; but  they looked upon the event as a sort of golden shower  which was to fill their pockets. They had been expecting our arrival for six months.

By eleven o’clock we had the ship safely moored close to the consul’s wharf. After dinner all hands were called to muster on the quarter-deck, when Commodore Wilkes  informed us that he wished to re-enter us for eighteen  months longer, saying at the time that it was impossible  to sooner complete the work which he had undertaken. He told us that those who re-entered should have three