When the vessel was painted there was still the naming of her, and this
matter came up one evening when we were having our supper on the open
ground near our hut, for we usually had our supper with the men in a
pleasant family manner--Hoggett and Wabberley and Chick having been
taken back to the rock. When I asked what we were to call her, before
any one else could speak Billy blurted out "Elizabeth Jane," and you
never heard such a shout of laughter as then rang through the air, for
Billy was so ready, and his face turned such a fiery hue the moment he
had spoken, that the men "smoked" him, as the saying is, and they
twitted him (being on very friendly terms with him now) on the lass he
had left behind him, and when he explained, very sheepishly, that she
was no more than eight years old when he saw her last they shouted
again, and told him that she certainly wouldn't know him now, with his
whiskers coming thick, and did he think she would wait for him when
there were properer men about? Billy took it all with surprising good
temper, and I found out afterwards that he and Clums had become very
close friends, and Clums told him that if he could not find Elizabeth
Jane, or if she was already wed, he would present him to his own
daughter Georgiana, called after the king, and a winsome lass, said
Clums, and just husband high.
We named the vessel _Elizabeth Jane_, and launched her, not by that
device of the windlass we had used for the _Fair Hope_, but making a
slipway of rollers, over which the men tugged her with ropes. Then we
sailed her on a first trip round the island, by which we learnt what
little changes were necessary in the outrigger to keep her steady. She
behaved exceeding well, and the seamen were mighty pleased with her,
and began in wondrous good spirits the preparation for the great voyage
we purposed making. They were greatly disappointed when I told them
that we should have to wait a good time yet, until the season of storms
and unsettled weather passed; but we had plenty to occupy us in the
meantime, for there was pork and fish to salt and cure, and breadfruit
to be prepared, for we did not know how long our voyage might last, and
I was in some dread lest our vessel would not have stowage room for all
the food I thought it necessary to take. We had to make also
water-pots of a special shape, so that they would lie snugly in the
bottom of the vessel, and we made hurdles to cover them, so that they
should not be broken. This matter of water gave me much concern, and I
resolved to fit up the _Fair Hope_ as a victualler, to follow our
larger vessel, as such vessels do the warships: we found that she had
room enough for a good many water-pots and a great quantity of
cocoa-nuts beside, the juice of which was both agreeable and wholesome,
if we did not drink it at night. We fitted up on each vessel a light
hoarding made of thin poles let into the gunwale, and carrying a canopy
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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