RETIRING FOR THE NIGHT - THE DOCTOR GROWS DEVOUT
CHAPTER LXXV. A RAMBLE THROUGH THE SETTLEMENT
CHAPTER LXXVI. AN ISLAND JILT - WE VISIT THE SHIP
CHAPTER LXXVII. A PARTY OF ROVERS - LITTLE LOO AND THE DOCTOR
CHAPTER LXXVIII. MRS. BELL
CHAPTER LXXIX. TALOO CHAPEL - HOLDING COURT IN POLYNESIA
CHAPTER LXXX. QUEEN POMAREE
CHAPTER LXXXI. WE VISIT THE COURT
CHAPTER LXXXII. WHICH ENDS THE BOOK
PART I
CHAPTER I.
MY RECEPTION ABOARD
IT WAS the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our
escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-topsail
aback about a league from the land, and was the only object that
broke the broad expanse of the ocean.
On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking
craft, her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and
bleached nearly white, and everything denoting an ill state of
affairs aboard. The four boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her
a whaler. Leaning carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors,
wild, haggard-looking fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks;
some of them with cheeks of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon
changes the rich berry-brown of a seaman's complexion in the tropics.
On the quarter-deck was one whom I took for the chief mate. He wore a
broad-brimmed Panama hat, and his spy-glass was levelled as we
advanced.
When we came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck, and
everybody gazed at us with inquiring eyes.
