THE ADVENTUROUS SHIP
_The Duff_
(Date of Incident, 1796)
A ship crept quietly down the River Thames on an ebb-tide. She was
slipping out from the river into the estuary when suddenly a challenge
rang out across the grey water.
"What ship is that?"
"_The Duff_," was the answer that came back from the little ship whose
captain had passed through a hundred hairsbreadth escapes in his life
but was now starting on the strangest adventure of them all.
"Whither bound?" came the challenge again from the man-o'-war that had
hailed them.
"Otaheite," came the answer, which would startle the Government
officer. For Tahiti[11] (as we now call it) was many thousands of
miles away in the heart of the South Pacific Ocean. Indeed it had only
been discovered by Captain Cook twenty-eight years earlier in 1768.
_The Duff_ was a small sailing-ship such as one of our American ocean
liners of to-day could put into her dining saloon.
"What cargo?" The question came again from the officer on the
man-o'-war.
"Missionaries and provisions," was Captain Wilson's answer.
The man-o'-war's captain was puzzled. He did not know what strange
beings might be meant by missionaries. He was suspicious. Were they
pirates, perhaps, in disguise!
We can understand how curious it would sound to him when we remember
that (although Wilfrid and Augustine and Columba had gone to Britain
as missionaries over a thousand years before _The Duff_ started down
the Thames) no cargo of missionaries had ever before sailed from those
North Sea Islands of Britain to the savages of other lands like the
South Sea Islands.
There was a hurried order and a scurry on board the Government ship.
A boat was let down into the Thames, and half a dozen sailors tumbled
into her and rowed to _The Duff._ What did the officer find?
He was met at the rail by a man who had been through scores of
adventures, Captain Wilson. The son of the captain of a Newcastle
collier, Wilson had grown up a dare-devil sailor boy. He enlisted as
a soldier in the American war, became captain of a vessel trading with
India, and was then captured and imprisoned by the French in India. He
escaped from prison by climbing a great wall, and dropping down forty
feet on the other side. He plunged into a river full of alligators,
and swam across, escaping the jaws of alligators only to be captured
on the other bank by Indians, chained and made to march barefoot
for 500 miles. Then he was thrust into Hyder Ali's loathsome prison,
starved and loaded with irons, and at last at the end of two years was
set free.
This was the daring hero who had now undertaken to captain the little
_Duff_ across the oceans of the world to the South Seas. With
Captain Wilson, the man-o'-war officer found also six carpenters, two
shoemakers, two bricklayers, two sailors, two smiths, two weavers, a
surgeon, a hatter, a shopkeeper, a cotton factor, a cabinet-maker, a
draper, a harness maker, a tin worker, a butcher and four ministers.
But they were all of them missionaries. With them were six children.
All up and down the English Channel French frigates sailed like hawks
waiting to pounce upon their prey; for England was at war with France
in those days. So for five weary weeks _The Duff_ anchored in the
roadstead of Spithead till, as one of a fleet of fifty-seven vessels,
she could sail down the channel and across the Bay of Biscay protected
by British men-o'-war. Safely clear of the French cruisers, _The Duff_
held on alone till the cloud-capped mountain-heights of Madeira hove
in sight.
Across the Atlantic she stood, for the intention was to sail round
South America into the Pacific. But on trying to round the Cape Horn
_The Duff_ met such violent gales that Captain Wilson turned her in
her tracks and headed back across the Atlantic for the Cape of Good
Hope.
Week after week for thousands and thousands of miles she sailed.
She had travelled from Rio de Janiero over 10,000 miles and had only
sighted a single sail--a longer journey than any ship had ever sailed
without seeing land.
"Shall we see the island to-day?" the boys on board would ask Captain
Wilson. Day after day he shook his head. But one night he said:
"If the wind holds good to-night we shall see an island in the
morning, but not the island where we shall stop."
"Land ho!" shouted a sailor from the masthead in the morning, and,
sure enough, they saw away on the horizon, like a cloud on the edge of
the sea, the island of Toobonai.[12]
As they passed Toobonai the wind rose and howled through the rigging.
It tore at the sail of _The Duff,_ and the great Pacific waves rolled
swiftly by, rushing and hissing along the sides of the little ship and
tossing her on their foaming crests. But she weathered the storm, and,
as the wind dropped, and they looked ahead, they saw, cutting into the
sky-line, the mountain tops of Tahiti.
It was Saturday night when the island came in sight. Early on the
Sunday morning by seven o'clock _The Duff_ swung round under a gentle
breeze into Matavai[13] Bay and dropped anchor. But before she could
even anchor the whole bay had become alive with Tahitians. They
thronged the beach, and, leaping into canoes, sent them skimming
across the bay to the ship.
Captain Wilson, scanning the canoes swiftly and anxiously, saw with
relief that the men were not armed. But the missionaries were startled
when the savages climbed up the sides of the ship, and with wondering
eyes rolling in their wild heads peered over the rail of the deck.
They then leapt on board and began dancing like mad on the deck with
their bare feet. From the canoes the Tahitians hauled up pigs, fowl,
fish, bananas, and held them for the white men to buy. But Captain
Wilson and all his company would not buy on that day--for it was
Sunday.
The missionaries gathered together on deck to hold their Sunday
morning service. The Tahitians stopped dancing and looked on with
amazement, as the company of white men with their children knelt to
pray and then read from the Bible.
The Tahitians could not understand this strange worship, with no
god that could be seen. But when the white fathers and mothers and
children sang, the savages stood around with wonder and delight on
their faces as they listened to the strange and beautiful sounds.
But the startling events of the day were not over. For out from the
beach came a canoe across the bay, and in it two Swedish sailors,
named, like some fishermen of long ago, Peter and Andrew. These
white men knew some English, but lived, not as Christians, but as the
natives lived.
And after them came a great and aged chief named Haamanemane.[14] This
great chief went up to the "chief" of the ship, Captain Wilson, and
called out to him "Taio."[15]
They did not know what this meant, till Peter the Swede explained
that Haamanemane wished to be the brother--the troth-friend of Captain
Wilson. They were even to change names. Captain Wilson would be called
Haamanemane, and Haamanemane would be called Wilson.
So Captain Wilson said "Taio," and he and the chief, who was also high
priest of the gods of Tahiti, were brothers.
Captain Wilson said to Haamanemane, through Peter, who translated each
to the other:
"We wish to come and live in this island."
Haamanemane said that he would speak to the king and queen of Tahiti
about it. So he got down again over the side of the vessel into the
canoe, and the paddles of his boatman flashed as they swept along over
the breakers to the beach to tell the king of the great white chief
who had come to visit them.
All these things happened on the Sunday. On Tuesday word came that the
king and the queen would receive them. So Captain Wilson and all his
missionaries got into the whale-boat and pulled for the shore. The
natives rushed into the water, seized the boat and hauled her aground
out of reach of the great waves.
They were startled to see the king and queen come riding on the
shoulders of men. Even when one bearer grew tired and the king or
the queen must get upon another, they were not allowed to touch the
ground. The reason was that all the land they touched became their
own, and the people carried them about so that they themselves might
not lose their land and houses by the king and queen touching them.
So at that place, under the palm trees of Tahiti, with the beating
of the surf on the shore before them, and the great mountain forests
behind, these brown islanders of the South Seas gave a part of their
land to Captain Wilson and his men that they might live there.
The sons of the wild men of the North Sea Islands had met their first
great adventure in bringing to the men of the South Sea Islands the
story of the love of the Father of all.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: Ta-hee-tee.]
[Footnote 12: Too-b[=o]-n[=a]-ee.]
[Footnote 13: M[=a]-t[)a]-v[)a]-ee.]
[Footnote 14: Haa-m[)u]-n[=a]y-m[)a]-này.]
[Footnote 15: Ta-ce-[=o].]