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. The duck I received from home I
soon made up into trousers and frocks, and, having formed the
remnants of the duck into a cap, I displayed myself, every Sunday,
in a complete suit of my own make, from head to foot. Reading,
mending, sleeping, with occasional excursions into the bush, with
the dogs, in search of coyotes, 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 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
minutes 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!'' &c., &c.; 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 he 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, and 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 toward 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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