CHAPTER XLIV

_EN ROUTE_ TO SYDNEY

[Sidenote: 1850. Jan. 4.]

On the morning of January 4 we passed to the northward of Sandwich Island, and found it thirty-five miles E.S.E. of the position it has on the chart.

We were visited along the coast by a succession of canoes. Natives very similar to those of the Fiji Islands.

We were puzzled at one time to make out the use of a curiously-formed piece of wood, about four feet long, shaped like a whale-boat, but solid.

From a hole in the centre descended a strong cord of twisted _rôtan_, forming a running noose, like a hangman’s knot. As I was leaning out of the cabin window, when there was just sufficient wind to give the ship steerageway, I observed a shark swimming leisurely along, some ten fathoms below the surface.

The natives, from their canoes, observing the monster dropped several of these oddly-shaped buoys into the water.

Some of our men fancy they saw them sprinkle a powder in a sort of magic circle round the buoys, but certain it is that a shark rose, and was fool enough to shove his head into the noose, when he was as completely hanged in his own element as ever rogue was from the gallows. The buoyancy of the float prevented his diving with it.

Having flourished his tail for a few minutes he was drawn up by his head on a level with the water and belaboured with the heavy ends of their paddles, then tumbled bodily into the canoe and hurried on shore amidst the yelling of the flotilla.

[Sidenote: Jan. 8.]

Stood over to the New Ireland coast, and then to the southward, between that and New Britain.

We now looked out for a harbour near the southern end of New Ireland--discovered by and named after a Captain Carteret, where fresh water was to be obtained.

It is a place occasionally visited by English and American whalers, as was proved by a salutation which reached our ears while we were nearing the shore.

“What ship that?”--then an oath. “Rum got?” “Give rope.” While delivering himself of these lessons in English and American, without waiting for an invitation the native sprang into the main-chains and thence on to the quarter-deck.

The manners of these savages were not at all improved by their intercourse with civilised nations.

[Sidenote: Feb. 5.]

Made the Australian coast, and on the 7th arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney.