It is traditional in Savage Island for the few white people--almost all rival traders--to hang together, and live in as friendly a manner as a great family party. If the great world is shut out, its cares are shut away, and life sits lightly on all. No one can be extravagant; no one can “keep up appearances” at the cost of comfort; no one is over-anxious, or worried, or excited over anything’--except when the rare, the long-expected ship comes in, and the natives rend the air with yells of joy, and the girls cocoanut-oil their hair, and the white men rush for clean duck suits and fresh hats, and the mails come in, and the news is distributed, and cargoes go out, and every one feasts from dawn till dusk, and all the island is in a state of frantic ebullition for at least three days. Then, indeed, Niué is alive.
We were all getting hungry when the _Duchess_ came in again, after nearly two months’ absence, for provisions were short, and most of us had come down to eating little green parrots out of the bush, and enjoying them, for want of anything better. It was certainly tantalising to see the ship off the island beating about for three days and more, before she was able to approach, but that is an usual incident in Niué. She came up at last, and I got my traps on board, and paid my bills, and carried away the model canoes and shell necklaces, and plaited hats and baskets, that were brought me as parting presents, and gave-a number of yards of cotton cloth, and a good many silk handkerchiefs, in return. And so the big sails were hoisted once more with a merry rattling and flapping, and away we went, northward a thousand miles, to desolate, burning Penrhyn and Malden Island.
_A Life on the Ocean Wave--Where They kept the Dynamite--How far from an Iced Drink?--The Peacefulness of a Pacific Calm--A Golden Dust Heap--Among the Rookeries--Sailing on the Land--All about Guano._
THE pirate captain was gone when the schooner reappeared off Niué, and a certain ancient mariner had taken his place. Things were not quite so exciting on the _Duchess_ under the new régime, but the order which reigned on board was something awful; for the ancient mariner had been a whaling captain in his day, and on whaling ships it is more than on any others a case of “Growl you may, but go you must,” for all the crew. The ancient mariner was as salty a salt as ever sailed the ocean. He had never been on anything with steam in it, he was as tough as ship-yard teak, and as strong as a bear, though he was a grandfather of some years’ standing, and he was full of strange wild stories about the whaling grounds, and odd happenings in out-of-the-way comers of the Pacific--most of which he seemed to consider the merest commonplaces of a prosaic existence.