concerned,
we might almost as well have gone straight on, for we only took one
small cow-cachalot. But the time spent thus cruising was by no means
wasted. Before we left finally for New Zealand, every one of those
Kanakas was as much at home in the whale-boats as he would have been in
a canoe. Of course they were greatly helped by their entire familiarity
with the water, which took from them all that dread of being drowned
which hampers the white "greenie" so sorely, besides which, the absolute
confidence they had in our prowess amongst the whales freed them from
any fear on that head.

Tui proved himself to be a smart harpooner, and was chosen for the
captain's boat. During our conversations, I was secretly amused to hear
him allude to himself as Sam, thinking how little it accorded with his
SOI-DISANT Kanaka origin. He often regaled me with accounts of his royal
struggles to maintain his rule, all of which narrations I received with
a goodly amount of reserve, though confirmed in some particulars by
the Kanakas, when I became able to converse with them. But I was hardly
prepared to find, as I did many years after, upon looking up some detail
in Findlay's "South Pacific Directory," this worthy alluded to as "the
celebrated Sam," in a brief account of Futuna. There he was said to be
king of the twin isles; so I suppose he found means to oust his rival,
and resume his sovereignty; though, how an American negro, as Sam
undoubtedly was, ever managed to gain such a position, remains to me
an unfathomable mystery. Certainly he did not reveal any such masterful
attributes as one would have expected in him, while he served as
harpooner on board the CACHALOT.

Gradually we crept south, until one morning we sighted the towering
mass of Sunday Island, the principal member of the small Kermadec
group, which lies nearly on the prime meridian of one hundred and eighty
degrees, and but a short distance north of the extremity of New Zealand.
We had long ago finished the last of our fresh provisions, fish had
been very scarce, so the captain seized the opportunity to give us a
run ashore, and at the same time instructed us to do such foraging as we
could. It was rumoured that there were many wild pigs to be found,
and certainly abundance of goats; but if both these sources of supply
failed, we could fall back on fish, of which we were almost sure to get
a good haul.

The island is a stupendous mass of rock, rising sheer from the wa