TYPEE

CHAPTER ONE

THE SEA--LONGINGS FOR SHORE--A LAND-SICK SHIP--DESTINATION OF THE
VOYAGERS--THE MARQUESAS--ADVENTURE OF A MISSIONARY'S WIFE AMONG
THE SAVAGES--CHARACTERISTIC ANECDOTE OF THE QUEEN OF NUKUHEVA

Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of
sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale beneath the
scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the
wide-rolling Pacific--the sky above, the sea around, and nothing
else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all
exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam.
Those glorious bunches of bananas, which once decorated our stern
and quarter-deck, have, alas, disappeared! and the delicious
oranges which hung suspended from our tops and stays--they, too,
are gone! Yes, they are all departed, and there is nothing left
us but salt-horse and sea-biscuit. Oh! ye state-room sailors,
who make so much ado about a fourteen-days' passage across the
Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships
of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining
off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking
champagne-punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little
cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with
nothing to disturb you but 'those good-for-nothing tars, shouting
and tramping overhead',--what would ye say to our six months out