metics might have effaced." But Hardy's tattooing was to Melville a mark indelible of the blackest of all betrayals.

More worthy emissaries than the pilot to the port of Tyohee were to welcome Melville to the Marquesas. The entrance of the Acushnet brought from the shore a flotilla of native canoes. "Such strange outcries and passionate gesticulations I never certainly heard or saw before," Melville says. "You would have thought the islanders were on the point of flying at one another's throats, whereas they were only amiably engaged in disentangling their boats." Melville was surprised at the strange absence of a single woman in the invading party, not then knowing that canoes were "taboo" to women, and that consequently, "whenever a Marquesan lady voyages by water, she puts in requisition the paddles of her own fair body."

As the Acushnet approached within a mile and a half of the foot of the bay, Melville noticed a singular commotion in the water ahead of the vessel: the women, swimming out from shore, eager to embrace the advantages of civilisation. "As they drew nearer," Melville says, "and as I watched the rising and sinking of their forms, and beheld the uplifted right arm bearing above the water the girdle of tappa, and their long dark hair trailing beside them as they swam, I almost fancied they could be nothing else but so many mermaids. Under slow headway we sailed right into the midst of these swimming nymphs, and they boarded us at every quarter; many seizing hold of the chain-plates and springing into the chains; others, at the peril of being run over by the vessel in her course, catching at the bob-stays, and wreathing their slender forms about the ropes, hung suspended in the air. All of them at length succeeded in getting up the ship's side, where they clung dripping with the brine and glowing with the bath, their jet-black tresses streaming over their shoulders, and half enveloping their otherwise naked forms. There they hung, sparkling with savage vivacity, laughing gaily at one another, and chattering away with infinite glee. Nor were they idle the while, for each performed the simple offices of the toilet for the other. Their luxuriant locks, wound up and twisted into the smallest possible compass, were freed from the briny ele

ment; the whole person carefully dried, and from a small little round shell that passed from hand to hand, anointed with a fragrant oil: their adornments were completed by passing a few loose folds of white tappa, in a modest cincture, around the waist. Thus arrayed, they no longer hesitated, but flung themselves lightly over the bulwarks, and were quickly frolicking about the decks. Many of them went forward, perching upon the headrails or running out upon the bowsprit, while others seated themselves upon the taffrail, or reclined at full length upon the boats."

The ship was fairly captured, and it yielded itself willing prisoner. In the evening, after anchor had been struck, the deck was hung with lanterns, and the women, decked in flowers, danced with "an abandoned voluptuousness" that was a prelude "to every species of riot and debauchery." According to Melville's account, on board the Acushnet "the grossest licentiousness and the most shameful inebriety prevailed, with occasional and but short-lived interruptions, through the whole period of her stay."

Nor were the French at the Marquesas neglectful of their duties to the islanders. Admiral Du Petit-Thouars had stationed about one hundred soldiers ashore, according to Melville's account. Every other day the troops marched out in full regalia, and for hours went through all sorts of military evolutions to impress a congregation of naked cannibals with the superior sophistications of Christendom. "A regiment of the Old Guard, reviewed on a summer's day in the Champs Elysées," Melville vouches, "could not have made a more critically correct appearance." The French had also with them, to enrich their harvest of savage plaudits, a puarkee nuee, or "big hog"-in more cultivated language, a horse. One of the officers was commissioned to prance up and down the beach at full speed on this animal, with results that redounded to the glory of France. This horse "was unanimously pronounced by the islanders to be the most extraordinary specimen of zoology that had ever come under their observation."

It would be an ungracious presumption to contend that the French, while at the Marquesas, exhibited to the natives only

The behaviour of the French

the sterner side of civilisation. at Tahiti leaves room for the hope that they were no less gallant at the Marquesas. An officer of the Reine Blanche, writing at sea on October 10, 1842, of the exploits of his countrymen at Tahiti, says, in part: "In the evening, more than a hundred women came on board. At dinner time, the officers and midshipmen invited them gallantly to their tables; and the repasts, which were very gay, were prolonged sufficiently late at night, so that fear might keep on board those of the women who were afraid to sail home by the doubtful light of the stars." The last three lines of this letter were suppressed by the Journal de Debats, it is true, but given in the National and other journals. Three days later the letter was officially pronounced "inexact" by the Moniteur, which courageously asserted that "it is utterly false that a frigate has been the theatre of corruption, in any country whatever; and French mothers may continue to congratulate themselves that their sons serve in the navy of their country."

While the Frenchmen at the Marquesas-no less than the Americans, one hopes with pardonable patriotic jealousywere giving their mothers at home cause for congratulation, Melville came to the determination to leave the ship; "to use the concise, point-blank phrase of the sailors, I had made up my mind to 'run away.' And that his reasons for resolving to take this step were numerous and weighty, he says, may be inferred from the fact that he chose rather to risk his fortune among cannibals than to endure another voyage on board the Acushnet. In Typee he gives a general account of the captain's bad treatment of the crew, and his non-fulfilment of agreements. Life aboard the Acushnet has already been sufficiently expatiated upon.

Melville knew that immediately adjacent to Nukuheva, and only separated from it by the mountains seen from the harbour, lay the lovely valley of Happar, whose inmates cherished the most friendly relations with the inhabitants of Nukuheva. On the other side of Happar, and closely adjoining it, lay the magnificent valley of the dreaded Typee, the unappeasable enemies of both these tribes. These Typees enjoyed a

prodigious notoriety all over the islands. The natives of Nukuheva, Melville says, used to try to frighten the crew of the Acushnet "by pointing to one of their own number and calling him a Typee, manifesting no little surprise when we did not take to our heels at so terrible an announcement." But having ascertained the fact that the tribes of the Marquesas dwell isolated in the depths of the valleys, and avoided wandering about the more elevated portions of the islands, Melville concluded that unperceived he might effect a passage to the mountains, where he might easily and safely remain, supporting himself on such fruits as came in his way, until the sailing of the ship. The idea pleased him greatly. He imagined himself seated beneath a cocoanut tree on the brow of the mountain, with a cluster of plantains within easy reach, criticising the ship's nautical evolutions as she worked her way out of the harbour, and contrasting the verdant scenery about him with the recollections of narrow greasy decks and the vile gloom of the forecastle.

Melville at first prided himself that he was the only person on board the Acushnet sufficiently reckless to attempt an idyllic sojourn on an island of irreclaimable cannibals. But Toby's perennially hanging over the side of the ship, gazing wistfully at the shore in moody isolation, coupled with Melville's knowledge of Toby's hearty detestation of the ship, of his dauntless courage, and his other engaging traits as companion in high adventure, led Melville to share with Toby his schemes. A few words won Toby's most impetuous co-operation. Plans were rapidly made and ratified by an affectionate wedding of palms, when, to elude suspicion, each repaired to his hammock to spend a last night aboard the Acushnet.

On the morrow, with as much tobacco, ship's biscuit and calico as they could stow in the front of their frocks, Melville and Toby made off for the interior of Nukuheva,-but not before Melville "lingered behind in the forecastle a moment to take a parting glance at its familiar features." Their five days of marvellous adventures that landed them finally in the valley of Typee has abidingly tried the credulity of Melville's