Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
and the Long Doctor enjoyed the hunt they took in the wilds of the
mountains: but back to the mosquitoes, the sweet-potatoes, and the
hardships of agriculture, they decided to launch forth again upon the
luck of the open road. What clothes they had were useless rags. So
barefooted, and garbed like comic opera brigands or mendicant grandees,
they started out on a tour of discovery around the island of Imeeo.
After about ten days of pleasant adventure and hospitality from the
natives they arrived at Partoowye to be accepted into the household of
an aristocratic-looking islander named Jeremiah Po-Po, and his wife
Arfretee. This was a household of converts: “Po-Po was, in truth, a
Christian,” Melville says: “the only one, Arfretee excepted, whom I
personally knew to be such, among all the natives of Polynesia.”
Arfretee fitted out Melville and the Doctor each with a new sailor
frock and a pair of trousers: and after a bath, a pleasant dinner, and
a nap, they came forth like a couple of bridegrooms.
Melville was in Partoowye, as guest of Po-Po, for about five weeks.
At that time it was believed that Queen Pomare--who was then in poor
health and spirits, and living in retirement in Partoowye--entertained
some idea of making a stand against the French. In this event, she
would, of course, be glad to enlist all the foreigners she could.
Melville and the Long Doctor played with the idea of being used by
Pomare as officers, should she take to warlike measures. But in this
scheme they won little encouragement. For though Pomare had, previous
to her misfortunes, admitted to her levees the humblest sailor who
cared to attend upon Majesty, she was, in her eclipse, averse to
receiving calls.
Shut off from an immediate prospect of interviewing Pomare, Melville
improved his time by studying the native life, and by visiting a whaler
in the harbour--the _Leviathan_--taking the precaution to secure
himself a bunk in the forecastle should he fail of a four-poster at
Court. His heart warmed to the _Leviathan_ after his first visit of
inspection on board. “Like all large, comfortable old whalers, she had
a sort of motherly look:--broad in the beam, flush decks, and four
chubby boats hanging at her breast.” The food, too, was promising. “My
sheath-knife never cut into better sea-beef. The bread, too, was hard,
and dry, and brittle as glass; and there was plenty of both.” The mate
had a likeable voice: “hearing it was as good as a look at his face.”
But Melville still clung to the hope of winning the ear of Pomare.
Although there was, Melville says, “a good deal of waggish comrades’
nonsense” about his and Long Ghost’s expectation of court preferment,
“we nevertheless really thought that something to our advantage might
turn up in that quarter.”
Pomare was then upward of thirty years of age; twice stormily married;
and a good sad Christian again,--after lapses into excommunication;
she eked out her royal exchequer by going into the laundry business,
publicly soliciting, by her agents, the washing of the linen belonging
to the officers of ships touching in her harbours. Her English sister,
Queen Victoria, had sent her a very showy but uneasy headdress--a
crown. Having no idea of reserving so pretty a bauble for coronation
days, which came so seldom, her majesty sported it whenever she
appeared in public. To show her familiarity with European customs, she
touched it to all foreigners of distinction--whaling captains and the
like--whom she happened to meet in her evening walk on the Broom Road.
Melville discovered among Pomare’s retinue a Marquesan warrior,
Marbonna,--a wild heathen who scorned the vices and follies of the
Christian court of Tahiti and the degeneracy of the people among whom
fortune had thrown him. Through the instrumentality of Marbonna, who
officiated as nurse of Pomare’s children, Melville and the Doctor at
last found themselves admitted into the palace of Pomare.
“The whole scene was a strange one,” Melville says; “but what most
excited our surprise was the incongruous assemblage of the most costly
objects from all quarters of the globe. Superb writing-desks of
rosewood, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl; decanters and goblets
of cut glass; embossed volumes of plates; gilded candelabras; sets of
globes and mathematical instruments; laced hats and sumptuous garments
of all sorts were strewn about among greasy calabashes half-filled with
_poce_, rolls of old tappa and matting, paddles and fish-spears. A
folio volume of Hogarth lay open, with a cocoanut shell of some musty
preparation capsized among the miscellaneous furniture of the Rake’s
apartment.”
While Melville and the Doctor were amusing themselves in this museum of
curiosities, Pomare entered, unconscious of the presence of intruders.
“She wore a loose gown of blue silk, with two rich shawls, one red, the
other yellow, tied about her neck. Her royal majesty was barefooted.
She was about the ordinary size, rather matronly; her features not very
handsome; her mouth voluptuous; but there was a care-worn expression
in her face, probably attributable to her late misfortunes. From her
appearance, one would judge her about forty; but she is not so old. As
the Queen approached one of the recesses, her attendants hurried up,
escorted her in, and smoothed the mats on which she at last reclined.
Two girls soon appeared, carrying their mistress’ repast; and then,
surrounded by cut glass and porcelain, and jars of sweetmeats and
confections, Pomare Vahinee I., the titular Queen of Tahiti, ate fish
and _poee_ out of her native calabashes, disdaining either knife or
spoon.”
The interview between the Queen and her visitors was brief. Long Ghost
strode up bravely to introduce himself. The natives surrounding the
Queen screamed. Pomare looked up, surprised and offended, and waved the
Long Doctor and Melville out of the house. Though Melville was later to
view a South American King, was to win the smile of Victoria and meet
Lincoln, Pomare was the first and only Polynesian Queen he ever saw.
Disappointed at going to court, feeling that they could no longer
trespass on Po-Po’s hospitality, “and then, weary somewhat of life in
Imeeo, like all sailors ashore, I at last pined for the billows.”
The Captain of the _Leviathan_--a native of Martha’s Vineyard--was
unwilling without persuasion to accept Melville, however. What with
Melville’s associations with Long Ghost, and the British sailor’s frock
Arfretee had given him, the Captain suspected Melville of being from
Sydney: a suspicion not intended as flattery. Unaccompanied by Long
Ghost, Melville finally interviewed the Captain, to find that worthy
mellowed at the close of a spirituous dinner. “After looking me in the
eye for some time, and by so doing, revealing an obvious unsteadiness
in his own visual organs, he begged me to reach forth my arm. I did so;
wondering what on earth that useful member had to do with the matter
in hand. He placed his fingers on my wrist; and holding them there for
a moment, sprang to his feet; and, with much enthusiasm, pronounced me
a Yankee, every beat of my pulse.” Another bottle was called, which
the captain summarily beheaded with the stroke of a knife, commanding
Melville to drain it to the bottom. “He then told me that if I would
come on board his vessel the following morning, I would find the ship’s
articles on the cabin transom.... So, hurrah for the coast of Japan!
Thither the ship was bound.”
The Long Doctor, on second thought, decided to eschew the sea for a
space. A last afternoon was spent with Po-Po and his family. “About
nightfall, we broke away from the generous-hearted household and
hurried down to the water. It was a mad, merry night among the sailors.
An hour or two after midnight, everything was noiseless; but when the
first streak of dawn showed itself over the mountains, a sharp voice
hailed the forecastle, and ordered the ship unmoored. The anchors came
up cheerily; the sails were soon set; and with the early breath of the
tropical morning, fresh and fragrant from the hillsides, we slowly
glided down the bay, and we swept through the opening in the reef.”
Melville never saw or heard from Long Ghost after their parting on that
morning.
CHAPTER XII
ON BOARD A MAN-OF-WAR
“Oh, give me the rover’s life--the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let
me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into the saddle once more.
I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and
reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs. Let
me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it,
sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that
no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed
up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he
sleeps in the sea.”
--HERMAN MELVILLE: _White-Jacket_.
In 1898, there appeared the _Memories of a Rear-Admiral Who Has Served
for More Than Half a Century in the Navy of the United States_. S.
R. Franklin, the author of this volume, had lived a long and useful
life, with no design during his years of activity, it would seem,
of bowing himself out of the world as a man-of-letters. But in the
leisure of elderly retirement, he was persuaded by his friends to
get rid of his reminiscences once for all by putting them into a
book. Rear-Admiral Franklin took an inventory of his rich life, and
accepted the challenge. Had he not roamed about the globe since he
was sixteen years of age? And he had known a dozen famous Admirals,
three Presidents, three Emperors, two Popes, five Christian Kings and
a properly corresponding number of Queens, not to mention a whole army
of lesser notables.
In 1842, as midshipman aboard the _United States_ frigate, Franklin
cruised the Pacific. The _United States_ stopped at Honolulu, touched
at the Marquesas. Franklin reports that the Bay of Nukuheva “makes one
of the most beautiful harbours I have ever seen.” But upon the natives
he bestowed the contempt of a civilised man: “for the Marquesans were
cannibals of the worst kind, and no one who desired to escape roasting
ever ventured away from the coast.” The _United States_ did not remain
long in these waters, “where there was nothing to do but look at a lot
of half-naked savages.” So off sailed the frigate to Tahiti, where a
queen came aboard. But Franklin cannot remember whether it was Pomare
or some other queen: “Ladies of that rank were not uncommon in those
days in the South Seas.”
Franklin had then been cruising among the islands of the Pacific for
some months, and he was “not sorry when the time came to get under way
for the coast.” Men of Franklin’s type are a credit to civilisation:
men proud of their heritage, but unobtrusive in their pride. Franklin
was unmoved by any sanctimonious hankering to improve the heathen, or
by any romantic anxiety to ease into the mud of barbarism. “Savage and
half-civilised life becomes very irksome,” he says, “when the novelty
is worn off.”
“At Tahiti,” he goes on to state, “we picked up some seamen who were
on the Consul’s hands. They were entered on the books of the ship, and
became a portion of the crew. One of the number was Herman Melville,
who became famous afterwards as a writer and an admiralty lawyer. He
had gone to sea for his health, and found himself stranded in the
South Pacific. I do not remember what the trouble was, but he and his
comrades had left the ship of which they were a portion of the crew.
Melville wrote a book, well known in its day, called _White-Jacket_,
which had more influence in abolishing corporal punishment in the Navy
than anything else. This book was placed on the desk of every member of