milar occasion. He therefore went ashore with a party of
soldiers well armed, having given orders that none of the boats
belonging to the natives should be suffered to leave the bay, as it was
his determination, in case gentler measures should prove ineffectual, to
destroy them all. All the boats of both ships, well manned and armed,
were therefore so placed as to enforce obedience to this command.

Cook was received, according to King's account, with the greatest
respect: the people prostrated themselves before him. He proceeded
direct to the old King, and invited him on board his ship. The King
immediately consented; but some of the Yeris endeavoured to dissuade
him; and the more earnestly Cook pressed his going, the more strenuously
they endeavoured to prevent it. Cook, at length, seized the King by the
arm, and would have carried him off by force; which in the highest
degree irritated the assembled multitudes. At this moment a Yeri, who in
crossing the bay from the opposite side had been fired upon by the
English boats, rushed with blood streaming from his wound into the
presence of the King, and cried aloud to him to remain where he was, or
he would certainly receive similar treatment; this incident wound up the
rage of the people to its utmost pitch, and the conflict commenced, in
which Cook lost his life.

Karemaku, who, when a young man, had witnessed these circumstances,
related them to me; and the accounts of Cook's companions upon the whole
agree with his. Some isolated facts are differently stated by them; but
I was assured by all the natives of Wahu, that Karemaku had strictly
adhered to the truth. Even if we give entire credit to the English
narrative, we shall find that they were the aggressors,--that the
islanders acted only on the defensive, and that Cook's fate, however
lamentable, was not entirely undeserved.

John Reinhold Forster, in his preface to a journal of a voyage of
discovery to the South Sea, in the years 1776 to 1780, gives an extract
from a letter written to him by an Englishman in a responsible
situation, in which he says of Cook--"The Captain's character is not the
same now as formerly: his head seems to have been turned." Forster gives
the same account concerning the change in Cook, when he says--

"Cook, on his first voyage, had with him Messrs. Banks and Solander,
both lovers of art and science. On the second, I and my son were his
companions, enjoying daily and familiar intercours