Typee

I

The sea⁠—Longings for shore⁠—A land-sick ship⁠—Destination of the voyagers⁠—The Marquesas⁠—Adventure of a missionary’s wife among the savages⁠—Characteristic anecdote of the queen of Nukuheva.

Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific⁠—the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam. Those glorious bunches of bananas, which once decorated our stern and quarterdeck, have, alas, disappeared! and the delicious oranges which hung suspended from our tops and stays⁠—they, too, are gone! Yes, they are all departed, and there is nothing left us but salt-horse and sea-biscuit. Oh! ye stateroom sailors, who make so much ado about a fourteen-days’ passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking champagne-punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but “those good-for-nothing tars, shouting and tramping overhead,”⁠—what would ye say to our six months out of sight of land?