e Julia's crew complained. It was a mere trifle, not worth
the naming. They could have submitted to close stowage had the dunnage
been decent. But instead of swinging in cosy hammocks, they slept in
_bunks_ or wretched pigeon-holes, on fragments of sails, unclean rags,
blanket-shreds, and the like. Such unenviable accommodations ought
hardly to have been disputed with their luckless possessors, who
nevertheless were not allowed to occupy in peace their broken-down bunks
and scanty bedding. Two races of creatures, time out of mind the curse
of old ships in warm latitudes, infested the Julia's forecastle,
resisting all efforts to dislodge or exterminate them, sometimes even
getting the upper hand, dispossessing the tortured mariners, and driving
them on deck in terror and despair. The sick only, hapless martyrs
unable to leave their cribs, lay passive, if not resigned, and were
trampled under foot by their ferocious and unfragrant foes. These were
rats and cockroaches. Typee--we use the name he bore during his Julian
tribulations--records a singular phenomenon in the nocturnal habits of
the last-named vermin. "Every night they had a jubilee. The first
symptom was an unusual clustering and humming amongst the swarms lining
the beams overhead, and the inside of the sleeping-places. This was
succeeded by a prodigious coming and going on the part of those living
out of sight. Presently they all came forth; the larger sort racing over
the chests and planks; winged monsters darting to and fro in the air;
and the small fry buzzing in heaps almost in a state of fusion. On the
first alarm, all who were able darted on deck; while some of the sick,
who were too feeble, lay perfectly quiet, the distracted vermin running
over them at pleasure. The performance lasted some ten minutes." Persons
there are, weak enough to view with loathing and aversion certain sable
insects that stray at night in kitchen or in pantry, and barbarous
enough to circumvent and destroy the odoriferous coleopterae by artful
devices of glass traps and scarlet wafers. Such persons will probably
form their ideas of Typee's cockroaches from their own domestic
opportunities of observation. That were unjust to the crew of the Julia,
and would give no adequate idea of their sufferings. As a purring tabby
to a roaring jaguar, so is a British black-beetle to a cock-roach of the
Southern Seas. We back our assertion by a quotation from our lamented
friend Captain Cringle,