we thought, taught the savages a lesson which they would not be likely soon to forget. Arriving on board the schooner we "spliced the mainbrace" and partook of a lunch strongly resembling gun-flints and mahogany. Our ship’s bread was extraordinarily hard, and in small pieces about the size of a flint, and our salt junk was as hard and dry as a piece of old mahogany. Jack before the mast can, at a glance, determine to a certainty whether the so-called "beef" set before him is really bovine or horse flesh. Old Jack Weaver, after taking an observation of the sun with the thigh-bone of a horse, soliloquized as follows:
"Old horse, old horse, what brought you here,
From Saccarappa to Portland pier,
Where you’ve carted stones for many a year?
They treated you with much abuse,
Then salted you down for sailors’ use.
They curse your eyes when they’ve picked your bones;
Then give you a toss to Davy Jones."
We returned to Mbua Bay, arriving at midnight. The next morning the chief came on board our ship and demanded the two chiefs whom we had captured at Sour Laib, saying that they were their prisoners, and that they wanted to roast and eat them as a sacrifice to the gods. The request was not granted. A few days afterward the commodore learned that they belonged to another town, and that they swam off to assist us. We gave them some presents and sent them home. In the afternoon we got under way and proceeded farther up the bay, coming to anchor in twenty-eight fathoms of water off Waimea, or the boiling springs.
