Mutiny on the Globe by Thomas Farel Heffernan

Author:Thomas Farel Heffernan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-01-16T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

DOLPHIN

The Dolphin’s approach to Mili was tentative. The first sighting was late in the day, and for several hours the ship backed and filled and then stood off for the night. The island was almost certainly Jelbon (“the easternmost of the Mulgraves,” Lieutenant Paulding wrote), the home of Luckiair, Ludjuan’s son-in-law, who a year or so before had brought Lay from Mili Mili for a week’s visit.

On the morning of November 20 the Dolphin anchored on the lee side, the west, of the island less than two hundred yards off a point where the surf was breaking. At 9:30 Captain Percival took one of the ship’s cutters ashore and had his first meeting with the natives. “Very kind and hospitable” Lieutenant Paulding found them, ready to offer the visitors anything they wanted. The first thing they wanted was water for the ship; that was quickly found in several wells.

The real work on Jelbon began the next day, November 21. Some of the crew were assigned to fill and transport the water casks, and others were formed into exploration parties. Socializing with the natives continued, with the ship playing host to some of them, who were eminently well behaved. They were dressed formally as befitted the special occasion, wearing marmars, wreaths of flowers, bracelets, and rolls of leaves in their pierced ears. Not only did they not steal anything, but they were politely curious about the ship and anxious to converse, despite the language barrier, “taking pains,” Paulding says, “to make themselves understood.”

Meanwhile on land the exploring parties struck pay dirt: they found a whaler’s lance, pieces of canvas, and other traces of the Globe. When the natives who had come on board the ship were shown these objects, their enthusiasm for communication vanished. Perfectly clear questions from the ship’s people were met with suddenly blank looks on the faces of the natives, who had up to that point been so chatty. They were masterful at playing dumb.

The Dolphin’s officers did not jump to hasty conclusions about the Globe’s landing site on the basis of the things the exploring parties had found. And they were right; Globe objects would have had no difficulty making their way to the far eastern end of the atoll from the Globe camp at the far western end by simple exchange from hand to hand over the months since the camp was plundered.

By November 22, the third day that the visitors were on Jelbon, tension began to replace the initially warm and casual attitude of the natives. It was not merely because of the white men’s curiosity about the lance and canvas, but because of the assiduousness of the shore parties combing the island as if they had search warrants. Paulding, who had a keen eye for native reaction, sensed alarm. Some of the huts that had been occupied the day before were deserted, and most tellingly, a large canoe that had been on shore in the evening was gone; it had left overnight.

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