[10] We made a former cruise, our second, in the _Equator_, a little trading schooner.
In the afternoon the schooner (of 80-ton burden) began to fill up with natives; we were told that she was going to take a party of one hundred and eighty people on an excursion round the group, for which a lump sum of twenty-five tons of copra was paid. The decks of the little vessel were closely packed with laughing, chattering people; the hum of their voices came to us like the sound of bees. It was just so, not very long ago, that slave-ships used to carry them away. "What a haul that would be for labour!" remarked Tin Jack when he first caught sight of them.
There is a small enclosed lagoon in this island. Tin Jack, while on shore, broke off some of the reef coral and found it full of the same living worms as Louis discovered before on the other island, only here there were two varieties; one like a pallid earthworm and the other something like a small centipede. Tin Jack brought me a wreath of gardenias, and a spray of scarlet leaves. Mr. Hird brought me a bunch of jack-fruit leaves to polish my Tokalau buckets with. Some young banana plants were sent on board, I suppose for friends on another island.[11] Tin Jack was strongly tempted to stop here as is his custom at most islands. The trader at Natau was a rather dreadful-looking person, apparently afflicted with leprosy. He shook hands with me, to my dismay, for his fingers were dropping off. "I think I've got some native disease," said the poor fellow as he held out his hand.
[11] This must have been a high-low island, though in many atolls the earth is brought in schooner loads in which trees and flowers flourish.
_30th._--Still a heavy swell and the surf too strong for boats to venture in. A great crowd of natives on shore and many canoes drawn up on the beach. Pretty soon the canoes swarmed about the ship and we were overrun with eager venders of merchandise, mats, chickens, and eggs. One man followed me about beseeching me to buy a silver half dollar. "You want buy money?" said he. "How much tobac you give?" I bought one mat for ten sticks of tobacco, one for a comb, and one for a pattern of calico. I saw Mr. Henderson, in the midst of the harassing business of weighing copra, stop and paint a broad mark, with violet ink, down the breast of a fine young lad who swaggered about afterward with a conscious air of superiority.