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The South Sea Islanders have a thorough knowledge of the habits of this salt-water pirate, and know that by keeping underneath him, they cannot be touched, and they will fearlessly stab the intruder with their knives, and avail themselves of his momentary departure to regain the boat.
Each Keeling family possessed a neat well-furnished plank cottage enclosed in a little garden, besides a boat-house at the water-edge on the inner or lagoon side of the reef, and numerous boats were lying about on the white sand. The islanders, being almost born sailors, were naturally very skilful in everything connected with the sea.
Every day and all day long, save on a few rare occasions when special duties absolved him, the custom and religion of the islanders prescribed that their supreme incarnate deity should keep watch and ward without cessation over the great spreading banyan-tree that overshadowed with its dark boughs his temple-palace.
They waited some time for the master's words; for he was trying to help laughing. He and Mr Carnaby were so much alike in the pictures, and both so like South Sea islanders, that it was impossible to help laughing at the thought of this sketch going abroad as a representation of the Crofton masters.
Then, as it came directly towards them, and Smith set the noisy propellers in motion, they uttered shrieks of dismay and terror, and fled like hares into the forest. Some of them started too late. Smith, being now near the ground, set the engine going at low speed, overtook a group of the islanders before they reached shelter, and with a touch of the aeroplane flung them violently on their faces.
A four-pound gun was tried, and the effect was truly marvellous; the natives in the rigging and on deck threw themselves into the water, whilst those in the cabin jumped from the ports, and the ship was left in peace. Cook was not favourably impressed by these islanders, and describes them as "in general, the most ugly ill-proportioned people I ever saw."
And the canoes which these islanders now possess were probably the invention of their race, and furnished the means by which the aborigines spread from island to island of those thickly studded seas. In Africa the only existing indication of a migration of the forest folk into the open country is found in the Bushmen and Hottentots of the far south.
Meanwhile, the truce between Athens and Sparta had been ended, and war again declared. Sparta occupied permanently a post of the Attic territory, Deceleia, with merciless effect. The Sicilian disaster moved the islanders, notably Chios, to revolt, by Spartan help, against Athens. She, however, renovated her navy with unexpected vigour.
The brave islanders were not long in coming to their decision: they would not, they said, consent to enslave a city which had maintained its liberty for seven hundred years; they put their trust in divine justice, and in their kinsmen the Spartans, and were resolved to resist to the last.
Soon we shall have the very pick of our youth collected on the shores of these ungrateful islanders who have turned against their best friends, and these misguided people will see for themselves the fruits of our civilization as we see it, in the persons of our soldiers. Permit me in responding to your flattering toast to propose the names of Mr. Reddy and Mr.
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