We have been two days at merry Manahiki, and the cargo is in, and the Captain has ordered the _Duchess_--looking shockingly cock-nosed without her great jib-boom--to be put under sail again. As the booms begin to rattle, and the sails to rise against the splendid rose and daffodil of the Pacific sunset, Shalli, our Cingalese steward, leans sadly over the rail, listening to the thrilling beat of the drum that is just beginning to throb across the still waters of the lagoon, now that evening and its merrymaking are coming on once more.
“He plenty good place, that,” says Shalli mournfully. “All the time dancing, singing, eating, no working--he all same place as heaven. O my God, I plenty wish I stopping there, I no wanting any heaven then!”
With this pious aspiration in our ears, we spread our white wings once more--for the last time. Raratonga lies before us now, and from Raratonga the steamers go, and the mails and tourists come, and the doors of the great world open for us again. So, good-bye to the life of the schooner.
_The Last of the Island Kingdoms--Fashions in Nukualofa--The King who was shy--His Majesty’s Love Story--Who got the Wedding-Cake?--The Chancellor goes to Jail--Bungalow Housekeeping--The Wood of the Sacred Bats--By the Tombs of the Tui-Tongas--A “Chief” Kava-party--The Waits!--Mariner’s Cave--The Cave of the Swallows--To Samoa._
SOME weeks afterwards, after a round of three thousand miles, I found myself in Tonga, better known as the Friendly Islands. The distance from the Cook Group was only one thousand or less, as the crow flies, but the steamers flew down to Auckland, and then back again, which naturally added to the journey. Pacific travel is a series of compromises. The British Resident of Niué, which is only three hundred miles from Tonga, wanted to get to the latter place about that time, and when I met him at Nukualofa, the Tongan capital, he had had to travel two thousand four hundred miles to reach it! But no one is ever in a hurry, under the shade of the cocoanut tree.
Who has heard of Tongatabu? who knows where the “Friendly Islands” are? You will not find them very readily in the map, but they are to be found nevertheless, about one thousand miles to the north-east of New Zealand. And if you take the steamer that runs every month from Auckland to Sydney, touching at the “Friendly” or Tongan Group, on the way, you will find yourself, in four days, set down on the wharf of Nukualofa, the capital of the island of Tongatabu, and the seat of the oddest, most comic-opera-like monarchy that the world ever knew.