Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/275

 the taro, a vegetable root, ground into a sort of paste. They ate it by thrusting their fingers into the calabash containing it and carrying quite a quantity to the mouth. When the paste was as thick as baker’s sugar molasses they used but one finger. Then it was miti rud (very good). When thin they used four fingers. Then it was oura miti (very bad).

Baked dogs, rats, and mice were once considered dainty dishes by the natives, but of late years they have  not been regarded as luxuries.

Yankee Jim, Johnny Smith, and other sailors’ boarding-house keepers, and land-sharks and land-lubbers were fairly overjoyed at our return, and received us  with open arms. We had not forgotten their tokens of kindness on a previous visit, when we were their guests  for two weeks, and nearly every man before the mast  with a hundred dollars in his locker. A week had not elapsed before our pretended friends, the land-sharks,  had stripped us of nearly every dollar, and all that we  had received in return was some scanty meals and  oceans of grog.

They were just like sailors’ boarding-house keepers all over the world. They appeared to be very kind-hearted and generous. They told us not to mind about the pay, but just give them a little bit of an order on the old  commodore and it would be all right. "Come, my shipmates, what are you going to have?" sung out Johnny Smith, the old land-shark. "Let us sing the flowing bowl, drink, dance, sing, and be merry." Then Yankee Jim, the old land-pirate, broke in and sang lustily: