Broughton was now sent overland to England for instructions about the transfer of Nootka. Puget became commander of the _Chatham_. The store ship _Daedalus_ was sent to the South Seas, and touching only { 283} at Monterey, Vancouver sailed to winter in the Sandwich Islands. Here two duties awaited the explorer, which he carried out in a way that left a streak both of glory and of shame across his escutcheon. The Sandwich Islands had become the halfway house of the Pacific for the fur traders. How fur traders--riff-raff adventurers from earth's ends beyond the reach of law--may have acted among these simple people may be guessed from the conduct of Cook's crews; and Cook was a strict disciplinarian. Those who sow to the wind, need not be surprised if they reap the whirlwind. White men, welcomed by these Indians as gods, repaid the native hospitality by impressing natives as crews to a northern climate where the transition from semitropics meant almost certain death. For a fur trader to slip into Hawaii, entice women aboard, then scud off to America where the victims might rot unburied for all the traders cared--was considered a joke. How the joke caused Captain Cook's death the world knows; and the joke was becoming a little frequent, a little bold, a little too grim for the white traders' sense of security. The Sandwich Islanders had actually formed the plot of capturing every vessel that came into their harbors and holding the crews for extortionate ransom. How many white men were victims of this plot--to die by the assassin's knife or waiting for the ransom that never came--is not a part of this record. It was becoming a common thing to find white men living in a state of quasi-slavery among the { 284} islanders, each white held as hostage for the security of the others not escaping. Within three years three ships had been attacked, one Spanish, one American, one English--the store ship _Daedalus_ on the way out to Nootka with supplies for Vancouver. Two officers, Hergest and Gooch of the _Daedalus_, had been seized, stripped naked, forced at the point of spears up a hill to the native village, and cut to pieces. Vancouver determined to put a stop to such attacks. Arriving at the islands, he trained his cannon ashore, demanded that the murderers of the _Daedalus's_ officers be surrendered, tried the culprits with all the solemnity and speed of English court-martial, sentenced them to death, had them tied up to the mast poles and executed. That is the blot against Vancouver; for the islanders had put up a trick. The real murderers had been leading chiefs. Not wishing to surrender these, the islanders had given Vancouver poor slaves quite guiltless of the crime.