It was in the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that Melville made good his escape from the valley of Typee. The Australian whaler—called by Melville the Julia—which had broken his four months’ captivity, lay with her main-topsail aback, about a league from the land. “She turned out to be a small, slatternly looking craft, her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly white, and everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. Leaning carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks of mottled bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich berry-brown of a seaman’s complexion in the tropics.” So extraordinary was Melville’s appearance—“a robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders, my hair and beard were uncut, and I betrayed other evidences of my recent adventure”—that as the boat came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck. Immediately on gaining the deck, Melville was beset on all sides by questions.

Indeed, never afterwards, it appears, could Melville escape a like curiosity. Henceforth he was to be “the man who lived among the cannibals.” Nor does he always seem to have been so uncommunicative as he grew in later years. In the Preface to Omoo, after recording the fact that he kept no journal during his wanderings in the South Seas, he says: “The frequency, however, with which these incidents have been verbally related, has tended to stamp them upon the memory.” There is novelty in his logic: all twice-told tales are not always just-so stories. He says, too, in the Preface to Typee: “The incidents recorded in the following pages have often served, when ‘spun as a yarn,’ not only to relieve the weariness of many a night-watch at sea, but to excite the warmest sympathies of the author’s shipmates.”

Upon being taken aboard the Julia, Melville was almost immediately seen by the captain, a young, pale, slender, sickly looking creature, who signed Melville up for one cruise, engaging to discharge him at the next port.

Life on board the Julia was, if anything, worse than life on board the Acushnet. In the first place, Melville was ill. Not until three months after his escape from Typee did he regain his normal strength. And, as always, Melville looked back with regret upon leaving the life he had so wanted to escape from while he was in the midst of it. “As the land faded from my sight,” he says, “I was all alive to the change in my condition. But how far short of our expectations is oftentimes the fulfilment of the most ardent hopes. Safe aboard of a ship—so long my earnest prayer—with home and friends once more in prospect, I nevertheless felt weighed down with a melancholy that could not be shaken off.” Melville felt he was leaving cannibalism forever—and the departure shot a pang into his heart.

The ship’s company were a sorry lot: reduced by desertion from thirty-two to twenty souls, and more than half of the remaining were more or less unwell from a long sojourn in a dissipated port. Some were wholly unfit for duty; one or two were dangerously ill. The rest managed to stand their watch, though they could do little. The crew was, for the most part, a typical whaling crew: “villains of all nations and dyes; picked up in the lawless Spanish Main, and among the savages of the islands.” The provisions, too, on board the Julia were notoriously bad, even for a whaler. Melville’s regret at leaving Typee was not mere wanton sentimentality.

The captain was despised by all aboard. He was commonly called “The Cabin Boy,” “Paper Jack,” “Miss Guy” and other descriptive titles. Though sheepish looking, he was a man of still, timid cunning that did not endear him to Melville.

The mate, John Jermin, was of the efficient race of short thick-set men: bullet headed, with a fierce little squint out of one eye, and a nose with a rakish tilt to one side. His was the art of knocking a man down with irresistible good humour, so the very men he flogged loved him like a brother. He had but one failing: he abhorred weak infusions, and cleaved manfully to strong drink. He was never completely sober: and when he was nearly drunk he was uncommonly obstreperous.

Jermin was master of every man aboard except the ship’s carpenter,—a man so excessively ugly he went by the name of “Beauty.” As ill-favoured as Beauty was in person, he was no less ugly in temper: his face had soured his heart. Melville witnessed an encounter between Jermin and Beauty: an encounter that showed up clearly the state of affairs on board. While Beauty was thrashing Jermin in the forecastle, the captain called down the scuttle: “Why, why, what’s all this about? Mr. Jermin, Mr. Jermin—carpenter, carpenter: what are you doing down there? Come on deck; come on deck.” In reply to this, Doctor Long Ghost cried out in a squeak, “Ah! Miss Guy, is that you? Now, my dear, go right home, or you’ll get hurt.” The captain dipped his head down the scuttle to make answer, to receive, full in the face, the contents of a tin of soaked biscuit and tea-leaves. Things were not well aboard the Julia.

But it was Doctor Long Ghost—he who so mocked the captain—who figures most largely in Melville’s history: a man remarkable both in appearance and in personality. He was over six feet—a tower of bones, with a bloodless complexion, fair hair and a pale unscrupulous grey eye that twinkled occasionally with the very devil of mischief. At the beginning of the cruise of the Julia, as ship’s doctor, he had lived in the cabin with the captain. But once on a time they had got into a dispute about politics, and the doctor, getting into a rage, had driven his argument home with his fist, and left the captain on the floor, literally silenced. The captain replied by shutting him up in his state-room for ten days on a diet of bread and water. Upon his release he went forward with his chests among the sailors where he was welcomed as a good fellow and an injured man.

The early history of Doctor Long Ghost he kept to himself; but it was Melville’s conviction that he had certainly at some time or other spent money, drunk Burgundy, and associated with gentlemen. “He quoted Virgil, and talked of Hobbes of Malmsbury, besides repeating poetry by the canto, especially Hudibras.” In the most casual manner, too, he could refer to an amour he had in Palermo, his lion hunting before breakfast among the Kaffirs, and the quality of coffee he had drunk in Muscat.

Melville was in no condition, physically, to engage in the ship’s duties, so he and Doctor Long Ghost fraternised in the forecastle, where they were treated by the crew as distinguished guests. There they talked, played chess—with an outfit of their own manufacture—and there Melville read the books of the Long Doctor, over and over again, not omitting a long treatise on the scarlet fever.

At its best, the forecastle is never an ideal abode: but the forecastle of the Julia—its bunks half wrecked, its filthy sailors’ pantry, and its plague of rats and cockroaches—must have made the Highlander seem as paradise in retrospect. The forecastle of the Julia, Melville says, “looked like the hollow of an old tree going to decay. In every direction the wood was damp and discoloured, and here and there soft and porous. Moreover, it was hacked and hewed without mercy, the cook frequently helping himself to splinters for kindling wood.” The viciousness of the crew of the Julia, did not, of course, perceptibly enhance the charms of the forecastle. Nor was Melville’s estate made more enviable when the man in the bunk next to his went wildly delirious. One night Melville was awakened from a vague dream of horrors by something clammy resting on him: his neighbour, with a stark stiff arm reached out into Melville’s bunk, had during the night died. The crew rejoiced at his death.

For weeks the Julia tacked about among the islands of the South Seas. The captain was ill, and Jermin steered the Julia, to Tahiti, to arrive off the island the moment that Admiral Du Petit-Thouars was firing, from the Reine Blanche, a salute in honour of the treaty he had just forced Pomare to sign.

But to the astonishment of the crew, Jermin kept the ship at sea, fearing the desertion of all his men if he struck anchor. His purpose was to set the sick captain ashore, and to resume the voyage of the Julia at once, to return to Tahiti after a certain period agreed upon, to take the captain off. The crew were in no mood to view this manoeuvre with indifference. Melville and Long Ghost cautioned them against the folly of immediate mutiny, and on the fly-leaf of an old musty copy of A History of the Most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies, a round-robin was indited, giving a statement of the crew’s grievances, and concluding with the earnest hope that the consul would at once come off and see how matters stood. Pritchard, the missionary consul, was at that time in England; his place was temporarily filled by one Wilson, son of the well-known missionary of that name, and no honour to his ancestor. It did not promise well for the crew that Wilson was an old friend of Captain Guy’s.

The round-robin was the prelude to iniquitous bullying and stupidity on the part of Wilson, Jermin, and Captain Guy. To the crew, it seemed that justice was poisoned at the fountain head. They gazed on the bitter waters, did a stout menagerie prance, and raged into mutiny. Then it was, after one of the men had all but succeeded in maliciously running the Julia straight upon a reef, that the good ship was piloted into the harbour of Papeetee, and the crew—including Melville and the Long Doctor, who were misjudged because of the company they kept—were for five days and nights held in chains on board the Reine Blanche. At the end of that time they were tried, one by one, before a tribunal composed of Wilson and two elderly European residents. Melville was examined last. One of the elderly gentlemen condescended to take a paternal interest in Melville. “Come here, my young friend,” he said; “I’m extremely sorry to see you associated with these bad men; do you know what it will end in?” Melville was in no mood for smug and salvationly solicitations. He had already declared that his resolution with respect to the ship was unalterable: he stuck to this resolution. Wilson thereupon pronounced the whole crew clean gone in perversity, and steeped in abomination beyond the reach of clemency. He then summoned a fat old native, Captain Bob—and a hearty old Bob he proved—giving him directions to marshal the crew to a place of safe keeping.

Along the Broom Road they were led: and to Melville, escaped from the forecastle of the Julia and the confined decks of the frigate, the air breathed spices. “The tropical day was fast drawing to a close,” he says; “and from where we were, the sun looked like a vast red fire burning in the woodlands—its rays falling aslant through the endless ranks of trees, and every leaf fringed with flame.”

About a mile from the village they came to the Calabooza Beretanee—the English jail.

The jail was extremely romantic in appearance: a large oval native house, with a dazzling white thatch, situated near a mountain stream that, flowing from a verdant slope, spread itself upon a beach of small sparkling shells, and then trickled into the sea. But the jail was ill adapted for domestic comforts, the only piece of furniture being two stout pieces of timber, about twenty feet in length, gouged to serve as stocks. John La Farge, in his Reminiscences of the South Seas, says: “We try to find, by the little river that ends our walk, on this side of the old French fort, the calaboose where Melville was shut up. There is no one to help us in our search; no one remembers anything. Buildings occupy the spaces of woodland that Melville saw about him. Nothing remains but the same charm of light and air which he, like all others, has tried to describe and to bring back home in words. But the beach is still as beautiful as if composed by Claude Lorraine.”

In this now-departed calaboose, Melville and the rest were kept in very lenient captivity by Captain Bob. Captain Bob’s notion of discipline was delightfully vague. He insensibly remitted his watchfulness, and the prisoners were free to stroll further and further from the Calabooza. After about two weeks—for days melted deceptively into each other at Tahiti—the crew was again summoned before Wilson, again to declare themselves unshaken in their obstinate refusal to sail again with Captain Guy. So back to the Calabooza they were sent.

The English Missionaries left their cards at the Calabooza in the shape of a package of tracts; three of the French priests—whom the natives viewed, so Melville says, as “no better than diabolical sorcerers”—called in person. One of the priests—called by Melville, Father Murphy—discovered a compatriot among the crew, and celebrated the discovery by sending a present of a basket of bread. Such was the persuasion of the gift that, on Melville’s count, “we all turned Catholics, and went to mass every morning, much to Captain Bob’s consternation. He threatened to keep us in the stocks, if we did not desist.”

After three weeks Wilson seems to have begun to suspect that it was not remotely impossible that he was making a laughing stock of himself in his futile attempt to break the mutineers into contrition. So off the Julia sailed, manned by a new crew. But before sailing, Jermin served his old crew the good turn of having their chests sent ashore. And when each was in possession of his sea-chest, the Calabooza was thronged with Polynesians, each eager to take a tayo, or bosom friend.

Though technically still prisoners, Melville and his former shipmates were allowed a long rope in their wanderings. Melville improved his leisure by attending, each Sunday, the services held in the great church which Pomare had built to be baptised in. In Omoo, Melville gives a detailed account of a typical Sabbath, and then launches into chapters of discussion upon the fruits of Christianity in Polynesia.

At church Melville had observed, among other puzzlingly incongruous performances, a young Polynesian blade standing up in the congregation in all the bravery of a striped calico shirt, with the skirts rakishly adjusted over a pair of white sailor trousers, and hair well anointed with cocoanut oil, ogling the girls with an air of supreme satisfaction. And of those who ate of the bread-fruit of the Eucharist in the morning, he knew several who were guilty of sad derelictions the same night. Desiring, if possible, to find out what ideas of religion were compatible with this behaviour, he and the Long Doctor called upon three sister communicants one evening. While the doctor engaged the two younger girls, Melville lounged on a mat with Ideea, the eldest, dallying with her grass fan, and improving his knowledge of Tahitian.

“The occasion was well adapted to my purpose, and I began.

“‘Ah, Ideea, mickonaree oee?’ the same as drawling out—‘By the by, Miss Ideea, do you belong to the church?’

“‘Yes, me mickonaree,’ was the reply.

“But the assertion was at once qualified by certain reservations; so curious that I cannot forbear their relation.

“‘Mickonaree ena’ (church member here), exclaimed she, laying her hand upon her mouth, and a strong emphasis on the adverb. In the same way, and with similar exclamations, she touched her eyes and hands. This done, her whole air changed in an instant; and she gave me to understand, by unmistakable gestures, that in certain other respects she was not exactly a ‘mickonaree.’ In short, Ideea was

“The explanation terminated in a burst of laughter, in which all three sisters joined; and for fear of looking silly, the doctor and myself. As soon as good-breeding would permit, we took leave.”

It is Melville’s contention that the very traits in the Tahitians which induced the London Missionary Society to regard them as the most promising subjects for conversion, were, in fact, the most serious obstruction to their ever being Christians. “An air of softness in their manners, great apparent ingenuousness and docility, at first misled; but these were the mere accompaniments of an indolence, bodily and mental; a constitutional voluptuousness; and an aversion to the least restraint; which, however fitted for the luxurious state of nature, in the tropics, are the greatest possible hindrances to the strict moralities of Christianity.” Of the Marquesans, Melville says in Typee: “Better it will be for them to remain the happy and innocent heathens and barbarians that they now are, than, like the wretched inhabitants of the Sandwich islands, to enjoy the mere name of Christians without experiencing any of the vital operations of true religion, whilst, at the same time, they are made the victims of the worst vices and evils of civilised life.”

Paul Gauguin, in his Intimate Journals, seems to share Melville’s conviction that the Polynesians are disqualified by nature to experience “any of the vital operations of the spirit.” In speaking of the attempts of the missionaries to introduce marriage into Polynesia he remarks cynically: “As they are going out of the church, the groom says to the maid of honour, ‘How pretty you are!’ And the bride says to the best man ‘How handsome you are!’ Very soon one couple moves off to the right and another to the left, deep into the underbrush where, in the shelter of the banana trees and before the Almighty, two marriages take place instead of one. Monseigneur is satisfied, and says, ‘We are beginning to civilise them.’”

The good intentions of the Missionaries Melville does not question. But high faith and low intelligence is a dangerous if not uncommon mating of qualities. “It matters not,” he says, “that the earlier labourers in the work, although strictly conscientious, were, as a class, ignorant, and in many cases, deplorably bigoted: such traits have, in some degree, characterised the pioneers of all faith. And although in zeal and disinterestedness, the missionaries now on the island are, perhaps, inferior to their predecessors, they have, nevertheless, in their own way, at least, laboured hard to make a Christian people of their charge.”

As a result of this labour idolatry was done away with; the entire Bible was translated into Tahitian; the morality of the islanders was, on the whole, improved. These accomplishments Melville freely admits. But in temporal felicity, “the Tahitians are far worse off now than formerly; and although their circumstances, upon the whole, are bettered by the missionaries, the benefits conferred by the latter become utterly insignificant, when confronted with the vast preponderance of evil brought by other means.” Melville found that there was still at Tahiti freedom and indolence; torches brandished in the woods at night; dances under the moon, and women decked with flowers. But he also found the Missionaries intent upon the abolition of the native amusements and customs—in their crowning efforts, decking the women out in hats “said to have been first contrived and recommended by the missionaries’ wives; a report which, I really trust, is nothing but a scandal.” To Melville’s eyes, Tahiti was neither Pagan nor Christian, but a bedraggled bastard cross between the vices of two incompatible traditions. And in this blend he saw the promise of the certain extinction of the Polynesians. The Polynesians themselves were not blind to the doom upon them. Melville had heard the aged Tahitians singing in a low sad tone a song which ran: “The palm trees shall grow, the coral shall spread, but man shall cease.”

Melville’s plea was that Christendom treat Polynesia with reasonableness, and Christian charity: perhaps the two rarest qualities in the world. His plea was not without results; he unloosed upon himself exhibitions of venom of the whole-hearted sort that enamour a misanthrope to life. The Living Age (Vol. XXVII) reprinted from the Eclectic Review a tribute which began: “Falsehood is a thing of almost invincible courage; overthrow it to-day, and with freshened vigour it will return to the lists to-morrow. Omoo illustrates this fact. We were under the illusion that the abettors of infidelity and the partisans of popery had been put to shame by the repeated refutation and exposure of their slanders against the Protestant Missions in Polynesia; but Mr. Melville’s production proves that shame is a virtue with which these gentry are totally unacquainted, and that they are resharpening their missiles for another onset.” This review then made it its object “to show that his statements respecting the Protestant Mission in Tahiti are perversions of the truth—that he is guilty of deliberate and elaborate misrepresentation, and ... that he is a prejudiced, incompetent, and truthless witness.” It was taken for granted that Melville was guilty of the heinous crime of being a Catholic. From this presumption it was easy to understand that Melville’s plea for sweetness and light was but the vicious ravings of a man “foiled and disappointed by the rejection of Mariolatry and the worship of wafers and of images, and of dead men by the Bible-reading Tahitians.” By a convincing—if not cogent—technique of controversy, Melville’s evidence was impugned by a discounting of the morals of the witness: a Catholic, and a disseminator of the “worst of European vices and the most dreadful of European diseases.”

Melville was twenty-eight years old when he Quixotically championed the heathen in the name of a transcendental charity which he believed to be Christian. Amiable Protestant brethren undertook to disabuse him of his naÏve belief that the guardians of the faith of Christendom invariably regulate their conduct in the spirit of Christ. As Melville grew in wisdom he grew in disillusion: and his early tilt at the London Missionary Society contributed to his rapid growth. At the age of thirty-three he wrote in Pierre—a book planned to show the impracticability of virtue—that “God’s truth is one thing, and man’s truth another.” He then maintained that the history of Christendom for the last 1800 years showed that “in spite of all the maxims of Christ, that history is as full of blood, violence, wrong, and iniquity of every kind, as any previous portion of the world’s story.” He says in Clarel:

Melville points out that Christ’s teachings seemed folly to the Jews because Christ carried Heaven’s time in Jerusalem, while the Jews carried Jerusalem time there. “Did He not expressly say ‘My wisdom is not of this world?’ Whatever is really peculiar in the wisdom of Christ seems precisely the same folly to-day as it did 1850 years ago.” In Clarel, he goes further, and calls the world

Though such a heretical idea was, to the Protestant brethren, of course, clean gone on the farthest side of damnation, yet were Melville and these same brethren working upon an identical major premise: each was righteously convinced that he was about his Father’s business—each was attempting to rout the other in the name of Christ. The brethren rode forth in the surety of triumph; Melville retired within himself convinced that defeat was not refutation, and that his way had been, withal, the way of Heavenly Truth. And since his way bore but bitter fruit, he shook the dust of the earth from his feet, convinced that such soil was designed to nourish only iniquity. “Where is the earnest and righteous philosopher,” he asks, framing his question to include himself in that glorious minority, “who looking right and left, and up and down through all the ages of the world, the present included; where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, He is not Lord of this: for else this world would seem to give Him the lie; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.” In this world, he grew to feel, a wise man resigns himself to the world’s ways. “When we go to heaven,” he taught, “it will be quite another thing. There, we can freely turn the left cheek, because the right cheek will never be smitten. There they can freely give all to the poor, for there there will be no poor to give to.” And this, he contended, was a salutary doctrine: “I hold up a practical virtue to the vicious; and interfere not with the eternal truth, that, sooner or later, downright vice is downright woe.” His milk of human kindness was not sweetened by the thunder of the Protestant brethren.

Resigned to the insight that while on earth no wise man aims at heaven except by a virtuous expediency, he accepted the London Missionary Society as one of the evils inherent in the universe, and leaving it to its own fate, looked prophetically forward to the Inter-Church World Movement. In The Confidence Man he makes one of the characters say: “Missions I would quicken with the Wall Street spirit. For if, confessedly, certain spiritual ends are to be gained but through the auxiliary agency of worldly means, then, to the surer gaining of such spiritual ends, the example of worldly policy in worldly projects should not by spiritual projectors be slighted. In brief, the conversion of the heathen, so far, at least, as depending on human effort, would, by the world’s charity, be let out on contract. So much by bid for converting India, so much for Borneo, so much for Africa. You see, this doing good in the world by driblets is just nothing. I am for doing good in the world with a will. I am for doing good to the world once for all, and having done with it. Do but think of the eddies and maelstroms of pagans in China. People here have no conception of it. Of a frosty morning in Hong Kong, pauper pagans are found dead in the streets like so many nipped peas in a bin of peas. To be an immortal being in China is no more distinction than to be a snow-flake in a snow-squall. What are a score or two of missionaries to such a people? I am for sending ten thousand missionaries in a body and converting the Chinese en masse within six months of the debarkation. The thing is then done, and turn to something else.” And in Clarel:

But when Melville was in Tahiti he harboured less emancipated notions than he later achieved. He was then to all outward seeming little better than a beach-comber, disciplined for his participation in a mutiny he and the Long Doctor had ineffectively tried to prevent, and in the end abandoned by his ecclesiastical guardians to drift among the natives of Tahiti, and to find his way back home any way he could.

The authorities at Tahiti left the party at the Calabooza to its own disintegration: a sore on the island cured not by surgery but by neglect. Gradually the mutineers melted out of sight.

With the Long Doctor, Melville sailed across to the neighbouring island of Imeeo, there to hire themselves out as field-labourers to two South Sea planters: one a tall, robust Yankee, born in the backwoods of Maine, sallow, and with a long face; the other, a short florid little Cockney. This strange pair had cleared about thirty acres in the isolation of the wild valley of Martair, where they worked with invincible energy, and struggling against all odds to farm in Polynesia, and with Heaven knows what ideas of making a fortune on their crude plantation.

Melville had tried farming in Pittsfield, and he liked the labour even less in Polynesia than he did in Christendom. The Long Doctor throve not at all hoeing potatoes under a tropical sun, all the while saying masses as he watered the furrows with his sweat. Both Melville and the Long Doctor enjoyed the hunt they took in the wilds of the mountains: but back to the mosquitoes, the sweet-potatoes, and the hardships of agriculture, they decided to launch forth again upon the luck of the open road. What clothes they had were useless rags. So barefooted, and garbed like comic opera brigands or mendicant grandees, they started out on a tour of discovery around the island of Imeeo. After about ten days of pleasant adventure and hospitality from the natives they arrived at Partoowye to be accepted into the household of an aristocratic-looking islander named Jeremiah Po-Po, and his wife Arfretee. This was a household of converts: “Po-Po was, in truth, a Christian,” Melville says: “the only one, Arfretee excepted, whom I personally knew to be such, among all the natives of Polynesia.”

Arfretee fitted out Melville and the Doctor each with a new sailor frock and a pair of trousers: and after a bath, a pleasant dinner, and a nap, they came forth like a couple of bridegrooms.

Melville was in Partoowye, as guest of Po-Po, for about five weeks. At that time it was believed that Queen Pomare—who was then in poor health and spirits, and living in retirement in Partoowye—entertained some idea of making a stand against the French. In this event, she would, of course, be glad to enlist all the foreigners she could. Melville and the Long Doctor played with the idea of being used by Pomare as officers, should she take to warlike measures. But in this scheme they won little encouragement. For though Pomare had, previous to her misfortunes, admitted to her levees the humblest sailor who cared to attend upon Majesty, she was, in her eclipse, averse to receiving calls.

Shut off from an immediate prospect of interviewing Pomare, Melville improved his time by studying the native life, and by visiting a whaler in the harbour—the Leviathan—taking the precaution to secure himself a bunk in the forecastle should he fail of a four-poster at Court. His heart warmed to the Leviathan after his first visit of inspection on board. “Like all large, comfortable old whalers, she had a sort of motherly look:—broad in the beam, flush decks, and four chubby boats hanging at her breast.” The food, too, was promising. “My sheath-knife never cut into better sea-beef. The bread, too, was hard, and dry, and brittle as glass; and there was plenty of both.” The mate had a likeable voice: “hearing it was as good as a look at his face.” But Melville still clung to the hope of winning the ear of Pomare. Although there was, Melville says, “a good deal of waggish comrades’ nonsense” about his and Long Ghost’s expectation of court preferment, “we nevertheless really thought that something to our advantage might turn up in that quarter.”

Pomare was then upward of thirty years of age; twice stormily married; and a good sad Christian again,—after lapses into excommunication; she eked out her royal exchequer by going into the laundry business, publicly soliciting, by her agents, the washing of the linen belonging to the officers of ships touching in her harbours. Her English sister, Queen Victoria, had sent her a very showy but uneasy headdress—a crown. Having no idea of reserving so pretty a bauble for coronation days, which came so seldom, her majesty sported it whenever she appeared in public. To show her familiarity with European customs, she touched it to all foreigners of distinction—whaling captains and the like—whom she happened to meet in her evening walk on the Broom Road.

Melville discovered among Pomare’s retinue a Marquesan warrior, Marbonna,—a wild heathen who scorned the vices and follies of the Christian court of Tahiti and the degeneracy of the people among whom fortune had thrown him. Through the instrumentality of Marbonna, who officiated as nurse of Pomare’s children, Melville and the Doctor at last found themselves admitted into the palace of Pomare.

“The whole scene was a strange one,” Melville says; “but what most excited our surprise was the incongruous assemblage of the most costly objects from all quarters of the globe. Superb writing-desks of rosewood, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl; decanters and goblets of cut glass; embossed volumes of plates; gilded candelabras; sets of globes and mathematical instruments; laced hats and sumptuous garments of all sorts were strewn about among greasy calabashes half-filled with poce, rolls of old tappa and matting, paddles and fish-spears. A folio volume of Hogarth lay open, with a cocoanut shell of some musty preparation capsized among the miscellaneous furniture of the Rake’s apartment.”

While Melville and the Doctor were amusing themselves in this museum of curiosities, Pomare entered, unconscious of the presence of intruders.

“She wore a loose gown of blue silk, with two rich shawls, one red, the other yellow, tied about her neck. Her royal majesty was barefooted. She was about the ordinary size, rather matronly; her features not very handsome; her mouth voluptuous; but there was a care-worn expression in her face, probably attributable to her late misfortunes. From her appearance, one would judge her about forty; but she is not so old. As the Queen approached one of the recesses, her attendants hurried up, escorted her in, and smoothed the mats on which she at last reclined. Two girls soon appeared, carrying their mistress’ repast; and then, surrounded by cut glass and porcelain, and jars of sweetmeats and confections, Pomare Vahinee I., the titular Queen of Tahiti, ate fish and poee out of her native calabashes, disdaining either knife or spoon.”

The interview between the Queen and her visitors was brief. Long Ghost strode up bravely to introduce himself. The natives surrounding the Queen screamed. Pomare looked up, surprised and offended, and waved the Long Doctor and Melville out of the house. Though Melville was later to view a South American King, was to win the smile of Victoria and meet Lincoln, Pomare was the first and only Polynesian Queen he ever saw.

Disappointed at going to court, feeling that they could no longer trespass on Po-Po’s hospitality, “and then, weary somewhat of life in Imeeo, like all sailors ashore, I at last pined for the billows.”

The Captain of the Leviathan—a native of Martha’s Vineyard—was unwilling without persuasion to accept Melville, however. What with Melville’s associations with Long Ghost, and the British sailor’s frock Arfretee had given him, the Captain suspected Melville of being from Sydney: a suspicion not intended as flattery. Unaccompanied by Long Ghost, Melville finally interviewed the Captain, to find that worthy mellowed at the close of a spirituous dinner. “After looking me in the eye for some time, and by so doing, revealing an obvious unsteadiness in his own visual organs, he begged me to reach forth my arm. I did so; wondering what on earth that useful member had to do with the matter in hand. He placed his fingers on my wrist; and holding them there for a moment, sprang to his feet; and, with much enthusiasm, pronounced me a Yankee, every beat of my pulse.” Another bottle was called, which the captain summarily beheaded with the stroke of a knife, commanding Melville to drain it to the bottom. “He then told me that if I would come on board his vessel the following morning, I would find the ship’s articles on the cabin transom.... So, hurrah for the coast of Japan! Thither the ship was bound.”

The Long Doctor, on second thought, decided to eschew the sea for a space. A last afternoon was spent with Po-Po and his family. “About nightfall, we broke away from the generous-hearted household and hurried down to the water. It was a mad, merry night among the sailors. An hour or two after midnight, everything was noiseless; but when the first streak of dawn showed itself over the mountains, a sharp voice hailed the forecastle, and ordered the ship unmoored. The anchors came up cheerily; the sails were soon set; and with the early breath of the tropical morning, fresh and fragrant from the hillsides, we slowly glided down the bay, and we swept through the opening in the reef.”

Melville never saw or heard from Long Ghost after their parting on that morning.