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On the 24th the ships went round to Matavai Bay, and Captain Cook presented to the king, Otoo, the remainder of his live stock. They here witnessed a human sacrifice, to propitiate the favor of their gods in a battle they were about to undertake. The victim was generally some strolling vagabond, who was not aware of his fate till the moment arrived, and he received his death-blow from a club.
We met in the maw of a hurricane, and parted in the maw of a shark, with seventeen intervening years of comradeship, the like of which I dare to assert has never befallen two men, the one brown and the other white. If Jehovah be from His high place watching every sparrow fall, not least in His kingdom shall be Otoo, the one heathen of Bora Bora.
Otoo saw to it that he always pulled stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom in recruiting labor was to land the recruiter on the beach. The covering boat always lay on its oars several hundred feet off shore, while the recruiter's boat, also lying on its oars, kept afloat on the edge of the beach.
He was found seated on the ground under the shade of a tree, with a large crowd round him, all standing with bare heads and shoulders in mark of respect. Captain Cook having given the presents he had brought, King Otoo inquired for Tupia and for several officers who had been on board the Endeavour.
In the end, Otoo saved my life; for I came to lying on the beach twenty feet from the water, sheltered from the sun by a couple of cocoanut leaves. No one but Otoo could have dragged me there and stuck up the leaves for shade. He was lying beside me. I went off again; and the next time I came round, it was cool and starry night, and Otoo was pressing a drinking cocoanut to my lips.
They were heaving lines at us from on board, but they continually fell short. The shark, finding that it was receiving no hurt, had become bolder. Several times it nearly got me, but each time Otoo was there just the moment before it was too late. Of course, Otoo could have saved himself any time. But he stuck by me. "Good-bye, Charley! I'm finished!" I just managed to gasp.
Among a large multitude of people, who were collected together upon the shore, was Otoo, the king of the island. Our commander paid him a visit on the following day, at Oparree, the place of his residence; and found him to be a fine, personable, well-made man, six feet high, and about thirty years of age.
Toward the last I was delirious most of the time, and there were times, too, when I heard Otoo babbling and raving in his native tongue. Our continuous immersion prevented us from dying of thirst, though the sea water and the sunshine gave us the prettiest imaginable combination of salt pickle and sunburn.
He made the king a present of some red feathers and three yards of gold cloth; and the captain gave him a suit of fine linen, a gold-laced hat, some more red feathers, and some tools. Captain Cook's wish had been to leave Omai with Otoo, as he thought of landing all his animals here, and supposed that Omai would assist in looking after them, and show their various uses.
I don't think it lasted four minutes, at the end of which time Bill King was the unhappy possessor of four broken ribs, a broken fore-arm, and a dislocated shoulder-blade. Otoo knew nothing of scientific boxing. He was merely a man-handler, and Bill King was something like three months in recovering from the bit of man-handling he received that afternoon on Apia beach.
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