Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/257

] haved in the most audacious manner. One of them having wrested his sword from Dewelle, the latter attempted to pursue the thief, but the others immediately raised their clubs in his defence. All of our people were robbed with the greatest effrontery, but when our boat arrived, two chiefs, who probably had prevented the savages from proceeding to greater extremities, begged leave to embark in it. They carried two small parcels of sugar-cane and cocoa-nuts to the General, who made them in return a present of an axe, and several pieces of stuff. Those chiefs, whom they called Theabouma in their language, wore on their head bonnets of a cylindrical form, adorned with feathers, shells, &c. (See Plate XXXVII, Fig. 1st and 2d.) but as they were open at top, they were no covering from the rain.

It was not long before a double canoe, dispatched from the shore, came to convey the chiefs back again. It was night before they departed, and the savages on shore had lighted a fire on a sand-bank to warm themselves. We went ashore on the 25th with those of the crew who were appointed to recruit our stock of wood, which they cut at a place 500 yards distant from where we had watered.

We did not stray far from our wood-cutters, for we were but few in number, and the designs