Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land. A story of old Fiji онлайн

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As I shall not have occasion to refer to my friend again, I may as well state here what befell him. There came a time when so many prisoners were at large, and the means of getting them in were so utterly inadequate, that the Governor issued a proclamation inviting them to return before a certain date, with the assurance that all who had not been guilty of murder or highway robbery should receive free pardons. My escapee accepted a free pardon, and going into business not long afterwards, became a highly-prosperous man.

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On a hot summer morning the Molly Asthore, a topsail schooner of 120 tons, tripped her anchor in Watson’s Bay, where she had been snugly moored during the previous night. Her square sails hung from the yards in graceful festoons, waiting to be sheeted home by her not very active crew, and under a light wind she slowly glided through Port Jackson Heads, where the swell of the lonely Southern Ocean was making itself heard in measured cadence.

The rich perfume of the wattle trees was slowly wafted to us by the lagging breeze. The shrill sounds of the garrulous cicadæ animated the thick bush which sheltered them on the shore. The wild flowers drooped under the heat. A lizard ventured forth upon the trunk of a dead tree for a moment, but quickly retired before the universal glare; and an occasional bright-winged parrot or lemon-crested cockatoo flashed through the palpitating atmosphere in search of a more leafy neighbourhood. A glimmering haze overspread the distant little straggling town of Sydney, and we left port under the gaze of but one man—a swarthy aboriginal, who brandished a spear at us from a neighbouring cluster of mia-mias lying in the shadow of a rock.