eadiness to sail--one thing alone
lacking--wood; and the white men dare not go inland for the needed wood.

So far the entire blame rested on the sailors. Now Cook committed his
cardinal error. With that very dare and quickness to utilize every
available means to an end--whether the end justified the means--Cook
ordered his men ashore to seize the rail fence round the top of the
stone burying-ground--the sacred Morai--as fuel for his ships. Out
rushed the priests from the enclosure in dire distress. Was this their
reward for protecting Cook with the wand of the sacred _taboo_? Two
hatchets were offered the leading priest as pay. He spurned them as
too loathsome to be touched. Leading the way, Cook ordered his men to
break the fence down, and proffered three hatchets, thrusting them into
the folds of the priest's garment. Pale and quivering with rage, the
priest bade a slave remove the profaning iron. Down tumbled the fence!
Down the images on poles! Down the skulls of the dead sacred to the
savage as the sepulchre to the white man! It may be said to the credit
of the crew, that the men were thoroughly frightened at what they were
ordered to do; but they were not too frightened to carry away the
images as relics. Cook alone was blind to risk. As if to add the last
straw to the Hawaiians' endurance, when the ships unmoored and sailed
out from the bay, where but two weeks before they had been so royally
welcomed, they carried {202} eloping wives and children from the lower
classes of the two villages.

It was one of the cases where retribution came so swift it was like a
living Nemesis. If the weather had continued fair, doubtless wives and
children would have been dumped off at some near harbor, the incident
considered a joke, and the Englishmen gone merrily on their way; but a
violent gale arose. Women and children were seized with a seasickness
that was no joke. The decks resounded with such wails that Cook had to
lie to in the storm, put off the pinnace, and send the visitors ashore.
What sort of a tale they carried back, we may guess. Meanwhile the
storm had snapped the foremast of the _Resolution_. As if rushing on
his ruin, Cook steered back for the bay and anchored midway between the
two villages. Again the tents were pitched beside the Morai under the
cocoanut groves. Again the wand was drawn round the tenting place; but
the white men had taught the savages that the _taboo_ was no longer
sacre