e happy with rum, listening to the
necessarily imperfect translation of these words, the ceremony may
well have been a strange magic to unknown gods, but it is not
difficult to imagine the feelings of Wilson, the tattooed Englishman,
as he translated this proclamation giving the rich and happy islands
to a country at war with his own. He listened and repeated, however,
with patriotic protests unuttered, and prepared to assist Porter in
his contemplated war against the Typees.

A week later one of the warships, with five boats and ten war-canoes,
sailed for the Typee beach. Ten canoes of Hapaas joined them there.
The tops of all the neighboring mountains were thronged with friendly
warriors armed with clubs, spears, and slings, and altogether not
less than five thousand men were in the forces under Porter, among
them thirty-five Americans with guns, which he thought enough.

The Typees pelted them with stones as they sat at breakfast, and
Porter sent a native ambassador, offering peace at the price of
submission. He came back, running madly and bruised by his reception.
Porter then ordered the advance.

The company advanced into the bushes, and were received by a
veritable rain of stones and spears. Not an enemy was in sight. On
all sides they heard the snapping sound of the slings, the whistling
of the stones, the sibilant hiss of the spears that at every step
fell in increasing numbers, but they could not see whence they came,
and no whisper or rustle of underbrush revealed the lurking Typees.

They pushed on, hoping to get through the thicket, which Wilson had
assured them was of no great extent. Lieutenant Down's leg was
shattered by a stone, and Porter had to send a party with him to the
rear. This left but twenty-four white men. The native allies did no
fighting, but merely looked on. They were not going to make bitterer
enemies of the Typees if the godlike whites could not whip them. The
situation was desperate.

However, Porter chose to go on. They crossed a river, and in a
jungle had to crawl on their hands and knees to make progress. They
thought themselves happy to make their way through this, but
immediately found themselves confronted by a high wall of rock,
beyond which the enemy took their stand and showered down stones.
The cartridges were almost exhausted. Porter sent four men to the
ship for more, and, with three men knocked senseless by stones, was
reduced to sixteen men.

There was nothing to