Two Years Before the Mast eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 591 pages of information about Two Years Before the Mast.

Two Years Before the Mast eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 591 pages of information about Two Years Before the Mast.

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.  As soon, however,

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Two Years Before the Mast from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.