He alone carried the musket; he alone could speak the language fluently, and to him the other whites thought that they owed the good-will of the natives. Two great ladies were given him to wife, and the order of _Koroi_ was bestowed upon him with the title of Koroi-na-vunivalu. Yet he stoutly refused to conform to native customs, and so he kept the respect of the chiefs. Shortly after the shipwreck the visits of ships became frequent, from India, America, and Australia. They lay for many weeks off the Mbua coast, while the crew cut and shipped sandal-wood; and the sailors, allured by the story of the dollars lost in the _Eliza_, deserted, or were discharged in considerable numbers. The dollars, though one or two were found as lately as 1880, were scattered beyond recovery, and the sailors drifted away, some to Mbau, and others to the villages on the sandal-wood coast, where they took native wives, and adopted every native custom except cannibalism.[20] The natives could give them everything they wanted except tobacco and spirits, and to acquire these, and to keep their position among their hosts, they would hire themselves out to the masters of sandal-wood ships at a monthly wage of £4, paid partly in knives, tools, beads, and firearms. William Mariner, who visited Mbau in 1810 on board the _Favourite_, the vessel in which he escaped from Tonga, found a number of whites there whose reputation both for crimes, vices, and for quarrelling among themselves was so bad that his informant, William Lee, was glad to make his escape from them. During Savage's absence with the army they nearly brought annihilation upon themselves. At a great presentation of food, the king's _mata_ omitted to set aside a portion for the white men, and they, incensed at what they took for an intentional insult, ran to the stack of food, and slashed the yams with their knives. Now, this is an insult which no Fijian will brook, and they were promptly attacked. They killed a number of their assailants with their muskets, but when the hut in which they had taken refuge was fired, they had to make for the sea. Three were clubbed as they ran, but two, Graham and Buschart, swam out to sea, and returned only when they were assured of the chief's protection. Thus did they save their lives, the first to perish more miserably at Wailea, the second to be the means of discovering the fate of de la Pérouse.