Numbers at once flocked to the royal abode, both artists and sitters. It was a famous time; and the buildings of the palace being “taboo” to all but the tattooers and chiefs, the sitters bivouacked on the common, and formed an extensive encampment. The “Lora Tattoo,” or the Time of Tattooing, will be long remembered. An enthusiastic sitter celebrated the event in verse. Several lines were repeated to us by Hardy, some of which, in a sort of colloquial chant he translated nearly thus: “Where is that sound? In Hannamanoo. And wherefore that sound? The sound of a hundred hammers, Tapping, tapping, tapping The shark teeth.” “Where is that light? Round about the king’s house, And the small laughter? The small, merry laughter it is Of the sons and daughters of the tattooed.” CHAPTER IX. WE STEER TO THE WESTWARD—STATE OF AFFAIRS The night we left Hannamanoo was bright and starry, and so warm that, when the watches were relieved, most of the men, instead of going below, flung themselves around the foremast. Toward morning, finding the heat of the forecastle unpleasant, I ascended to the deck where everything was noiseless. The Trades were blowing with a mild, steady strain upon the canvas, and the ship heading right out into the immense blank of the Western Pacific. The watch were asleep. With one foot resting on the rudder, even the man at the helm nodded, and the mate himself, with arms folded, was leaning against the capstan. On such a night, and all alone, reverie was inevitable. I leaned over the side, and could not help thinking of the strange objects we might be sailing over. But my meditations were soon interrupted by a gray, spectral shadow cast over the heaving billows. It was the dawn, soon followed by the first rays of the morning. They flashed into view at one end of the arched night, like—to compare great things with small—the gleamings of Guy Fawkes’s lantern in the vaults of the Parliament House. Before long, what seemed a live ember rested for a moment on the rim of the ocean, and at last the blood-red sun stood full and round in the level East, and the long sea-day began. Breakfast over, the first thing attended to was the formal baptism of Wymontoo, who, after thinking over his affairs during the night, looked dismal enough. There were various opinions as to a suitable appellation. Some maintained that we ought to call him “Sunday,” that being the day we caught him; others, “Eighteen Forty-two,” the then year of our Lord; while Doctor Long Ghost remarked that he ought, by all means, to retain his original name,—Wymontoo-Hee, meaning (as he maintained), in the figurative language of the island, something analogous to one who had got himself into a scrape. The mate put an end to the discussion by sousing the poor fellow with a bucket of salt water, and bestowing upon him the nautical appellation of “Luff.”