Dana, Richard Henry, 1815-1882; Sailors; Seafaring life; Voyages and travels
Saturday, July 11th. The Pilgrim set sail for the windward, and left
us to go on in our old way. Having laid in such a supply of wood, and
the days being now long, and invariably pleasant, we had a good deal of
time to ourselves. All the duck I received from home, I soon made up
into trowsers and frocks, and displayed, every Sunday, a complete suit
of my own make, from head to foot, having formed the remnants of the
duck into a cap. Reading, mending, sleeping, with occasional
excursions into the bush, with the dogs, in search of coati, hares, and
rabbits, or to encounter a rattlesnake, and now and then a visit to the
Presidio, filled up our spare time after hide-curing was over for the
day. Another amusement, which we sometimes indulged in, was "burning
the water" for craw-fish. For this purpose, we procured a pair of
grains, with a long staff like a harpoon, and making torches with
tarred rope twisted round a long pine stick, took the only boat on the
beach, a small skiff, and with a torch-bearer in the bow, a steersman
in the stern, and one man on each side with the grains, went off, on
dark nights, to burn the water. This is fine sport. Keeping within a
few rods of the shore, where the water is not more than three or four
feet deep, with a clear sandy bottom, the torches light everything up
so that one could almost have seen a pin among the grains of sand. The
craw-fish are an easy prey, and we used soon to get a load of them.
The other fish were more difficult to catch, yet we frequently speared
a number of them, of various kinds and sizes. The Pilgrim brought us
down a supply of fish-hooks, which we had never had before, on the
beach, and for several days we went down to the Point, and caught a
quantity of cod and mackerel. On one of these expeditions, we saw a
battle between two Sandwich Islanders and a shark. "Johnny" had been
playing about our boat for some time, driving away the fish, and
showing his teeth at our bait, when we missed him, and in a few moments
heard a great shouting between two Kanakas who were fishing on the rock
opposite to us: "E hana hana make i ka ia nui!" "E pii mai Aikane!"
etc., etc.; and saw them pulling away on a stout line, and "Johnny
Shark" floundering at the other end. The line soon broke; but the
Kanakas would not let him off so easily, and sprang directly into the
water after him. Now came the tug of war. Before we could get into
deep water, one of them seized him by the tail, and ran up with him
upon the beach; but Johnny twisted round, turning his head under his
body, and, showing his teeth in the vicinity of the Kanaka's hand, made
him let go and spring out of the way. The shark now turned tail and
made the best of his way, by flapping and floundering, toward deep
water; but here again, before he was fairly off, the other Kanaka
seized him by the tail, and made a spring towards the beach, his
companion at the same time paying away upon him with stones and a large
stick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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