As the red sun looked across the placid ocean through the tall, clean stems of the cocoanut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through the bars of a city prison, I went and stood in the edge of the water on the flat rock pressed by Captain Cook's feet when the blow was dealt which took away his life, and tried to picture in my mind the doomed man struggling in the midst of the multitude of exasperated savages--the men in the ship crowding to the vessel's side and gazing in anxious dismay toward the shore--the--but I discovered that I could not do it.
It was growing dark, the rain began to fall, we could see that the distant Boomerang was helplessly becalmed at sea, and so I adjourned to the cheerless little box of a warehouse and sat down to smoke and think, and wish the ship would make the land--for we had not eaten much for ten hours and were viciously hungry.
Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook's assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide.
Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received and welcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with all manner of food.He returned these kindnesses with insult and ill-treatment.Perceiving that the people took him for the long vanished and lamented god Lono, he encouraged them in the delusion for the sake of the limitless power it gave him; but during the famous disturbance at this spot, and while he and his comrades were surrounded by fifteen thousand maddened savages, he received a hurt and betrayed his earthly origin with a groan.It was his death-warrant.Instantly a shout went up: "He groans!--he is not a god!" So they closed in upon him and dispatched him.
His flesh was stripped from the bones and burned (except nine pounds of it which were sent on board the ships).The heart was hung up in a native hut, where it was found and eaten by three children, who mistook it for the heart of a dog.One of these children grew to be a very old man, and died in Honolulu a few years ago.Some of Cook's bones were recovered and consigned to the deep by the officers of the ships.
Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook.
They treated him well.In return, he abused them.He and his men inflicted bodily injury upon many of them at different times, and killed at least three of them before they offered any proportionate retaliation.
Near the shore we found "Cook's Monument"--only a cocoanut stump, four feet high and about a foot in diameter at the butt.It had lava boulders piled around its base to hold it up and keep it in its place, and it was entirely sheathed over, from top to bottom, with rough, discolored sheets of copper, such as ships' bottoms are coppered with.Each sheet had a rude inscription scratched upon it--with a nail, apparently--and in every case the execution was wretched.Most of these merely recorded the visits of British naval commanders to the spot, but one of them bore this legend:
"Near this spot fell CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, The Distinguished Circumnavigator, who Discovered these Islands A.D.1778.
After Cook's murder, his second in command, on board the ship, opened fire upon the swarms of natives on the beach, and one of his cannon balls cut this cocoanut tree short off and left this monumental stump standing.
It looked sad and lonely enough to us, out there in the rainy twilight.
But there is no other monument to Captain Cook.True, up on the mountain side we had passed by a large inclosure like an ample hog-pen, built of lava blocks, which marks the spot where Cook's flesh was stripped from his bones and burned; but this is not properly a monument since it was erected by the natives themselves, and less to do honor to the circumnavigator than for the sake of convenience in roasting him.
A thing like a guide-board was elevated above this pen on a tall pole, and formerly there was an inscription upon it describing the memorable occurrence that had there taken place; but the sun and the wind have long ago so defaced it as to render it illegible.
Toward midnight a fine breeze sprang up and the schooner soon worked herself into the bay and cast anchor.The boat came ashore for us, and in a little while the clouds and the rain were all gone.The moon was beaming tranquilly down on land and sea, and we two were stretched upon the deck sleeping the refreshing sleep and dreaming the happy dreams that are only vouchsafed to the weary and the innocent.
