After this signal act of vengeance, Captain Metcalf sailed from Mowee, and made for the
island of Owyhee, where he was well received by Tamaahmaah.
They installed themselves in the
island, and constructed a smaller boat with the debris of the two large ones.
They made signs for me to come down from the rock, and go towards the shore, which I accordingly did; and the flying
island being raised to a convenient height, the verge directly over me, a chain was let down from the lowest gallery, with a seat fastened to the bottom, to which I fixed myself, and was drawn up by pulleys.
Nukuheva is the most important of these
islands, being the only one at which ships are much in the habit of touching, and is celebrated as being the place where the adventurous Captain Porter refitted his ships during the late war between England and the United States, and whence he sallied out upon the large whaling fleet then sailing under the enemy's flag in the surrounding seas.
The men were no less than Kerick Booterin, the chief of the seal-hunters on the
island, and Patalamon, his son.
In many parts of the
island the bottoms of the valleys ar covered in an extraordinary manner by myriads of grea loose angular fragments of the quartz rock, forming "stream of stones." These have been mentioned with surprise b every voyager since the time of Pernety.
By this time I had got at a frightful distance from the
island, and had the least cloudy or hazy weather intervened, I had been undone another way, too; for I had no compass on board, and should never have known how to have steered towards the
island, if I had but once lost sight of it; but the weather continuing clear, I applied myself to get up my mast again, and spread my sail, standing away to the north as much as possible, to get out of the current.
"I wonder what is the name of this
island," said the Doctor, as he was climbing up the mountainside.
The captain yielded to these suggestions, and the Resolute was headed for the
island of Koumbeni.
Drift timber is thrown up on most
islands, even on those in the midst of the widest oceans; and the natives of the coral-islands in the Pacific, procure stones for their tools, solely from the roots of drifted trees, these stones being a valuable royal tax.
It was from the skipper of a Glasgow tramp, as passenger from Colombo to Rangoon, that I had first learned of the existence of
Island McGill; and it was from him that I had carried the letter that gave me entrance to the house of Mrs.
The water was three or four foot deep on the
island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom.
