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Joshua Slocum - Sailing Alone Around The World
It was the fashion of the native visitors to the Spray to come over the bows, where they could
reach the head-gear and climb aboard with ease, and on going ashore to jump off the stern and swim
away; nothing could have been more delightfully simple. The modest natives wore lava-lava
bathing-dresses, a native cloth from the bark of the mulberry-tree, and they did no harm to the
Spray. In summer-land Samoa their coming and going was only a merry every-day scene. One day
the head teachers of Papauta College, Miss Schultze and Miss Moore, came on board with their
ninety-seven young women students. They were all dressed in white, and each wore a red rose, and of
course came in boats or canoes in the cold-climate style. A merrier bevy of girls it would be difficult to
find. As soon as they got on deck, by request of one of the teachers, they sang "The Watch on the Rhine,"
which I had never heard before. "And now," said they all, "let's up anchor and away." But I had no
inclination to sail from Samoa so soon. On leaving the Spray these accomplished young women
each seized a palm-branch or paddle, or whatever else would serve the purpose, and literally paddled her
own canoe. Each could have swum as readily, and would have done so, I dare say, had it not been for the
holiday muslin.
It was not uncommon at Apia to see a young woman swimming alongside a small canoe with a passenger
for the Spray. Mr. Trood, an old Eton boy, came in this manner to see me, and he exclaimed,
"Was ever king ferried in such state?" Then, suiting his action to the sentiment, he gave the damsel
pieces of silver till the natives watching on shore yelled with envy. My own canoe, a small dugout, one
day when it had rolled over with me, was seized by a party of fair bathers, and before I could get my
breath, almost, was towed around and around the Spray , while I sat in the bottom of it,
wondering what they would do next. But in this case there were six of them, three on a side, and I could
not help myself. One of the sprites, I remember, was a young English lady, who made more sport of it
than any of the others.
CHAPTER XIII
Samoan royalty - King Malietoa - Good-by to friends at Vailima - Leaving Fiji to the south - Arrival at
Newcastle, Australia - The yachts of Sydney - A ducking on the Spray - Commodore Foy
presents the sloop with a new suit of sails - On to Melbourne - A shark that proved to be valuable - A
change of course - The "Rain of Blood" - In Tasmania.
At Apia I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. A. Young, the father of the late Queen Margaret, who was
Queen of Manua from 1891 to 1895. Her grandfather was an English sailor who married a princess. Mr.
Young is now the only survivor of the family, two of his children, the last of them all, having been lost in
an island trader which a few months before had sailed, never to return. Mr. Young was a Christian
gentleman, and his daughter Margaret was accomplished in graces that would become any lady. It was
with pain that I saw in the newspapers a sensational account of her life and death, taken evidently from a
paper in the supposed interest of a benevolent society, but without foundation in fact. And the startling
head-lines saying, "Queen Margaret of Manua is dead," could hardly be called news in 1898, the queen
having then been dead three years.
While hobnobbing, as it were, with royalty, I called on the king himself, the late Malietoa. King Malietoa
was a great ruler; he never got less than forty-five dollars a month for the job, as he told me himself, and
this amount had lately been raised, so that he could live on the fat of the land and not any longer be
called "Tin-of-salmon Malietoa" by graceless beach-combers.
As my interpreter and I entered the front door of the palace, the king's brother, who was viceroy, sneaked
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