Omoo: Adventures in the South SeasMelville, Herman
General
Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas
Melville, Herman
Adventure stories; Polynesia -- Description and travel -- Fiction
This garment, once worn as a festival dress, is now seldom met with;
but Captain Bob had often shown us one which he kept as an heirloom. It
was a cloak, or mantle, of yellow tappa, precisely similar to the
“poncho” worn by the South-American Spaniards. The head being slipped
through a slit in the middle, the robe hangs about the person in ample
drapery. Tonoi obtained sufficient coarse brown tappa to make a short
mantle of this description; and in five minutes the doctor was
equipped. Zeke, eyeing his toga critically, reminded its proprietor
that there were many streams to ford, and precipices to scale, between
Martair and Tamai; and if he travelled in petticoats, he had better
hold them up.
Besides other deficiencies, we were utterly shoeless. In the free and
easy Pacific, sailors seldom wear shoes; mine had been tossed overboard
the day we met the Trades; and except in one or two tramps ashore, I
had never worn any since. In Martair, they would have been desirable:
but none were to be had. For the expedition we meditated, however, they
were indispensable. Zeke, being the owner of a pair of huge,
dilapidated boots, hanging from a rafter like saddlebags, the doctor
succeeded in exchanging for them a case-knife, the last valuable
article in his possession. For myself, I made sandals from a bullock’s
hide, such as are worn by the Indians in California. They are made in a
minute; the sole, rudely fashioned to the foot, being confined across
the instep by three straps of leather.
Our headgear deserves a passing word. My comrade’s was a brave old
Panama hat, made of grass, almost as fine as threads of silk; and so
elastic that, upon rolling it up, it sprang into perfect shape again.
Set off by the jaunty slouch of this Spanish sombrero, Doctor Long
Ghost, in this and his Eoora, looked like a mendicant grandee.
Nor was my own appearance in an Eastern turban less distinguished. The
way I came to wear it was this. My hat having been knocked overboard a
few days before reaching Papeetee, I was obliged to mount an abominable
wad of parti-coloured worsted—what sailors call a Scotch cap. Everyone
knows the elasticity of knit wool; and this Caledonian head-dress
crowned my temples so effectually that the confined atmosphere
engendered was prejudicial to my curls. In vain I tried to ventilate
the cap: every gash made seemed to heal whole in no time. Then such a
continual chafing as it kept up in a hot sun.
Seeing my dislike to the thing, Kooloo, my worthy friend, prevailed
upon me to bestow it upon him. I did so; hinting that a good boiling
might restore the original brilliancy of the colours.
It was then that I mounted the turban. Taking a new Regatta frock of
the doctor’s, which was of a gay calico, and winding it round my head
in folds, I allowed the sleeves to droop behind—thus forming a good
defence against the sun, though in a shower it was best off. The
pendent sleeves adding much to the effect, the doctor called me the
Bashaw with Two Tails.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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