No doubt this was the woman Badger, described in the official account of
the mutiny of the _Venus_ as 'a very corpulent person.'

A BOATING ADVENTURE IN THE CAROLINES

In the year 1874 we were cruising leisurely through the Western
Carolines, in the North Pacific, trading at such islands as we touched
at, and making for the Pelew Group, still farther to the westward. But
at that season of the year the winds were very light, a strong ocean
current set continuously to the eastward, and there was every indication
of a solid calm setting in, and lasting, as they do in these latitudes,
for a week. Now, part of our cargo consisted of dried sharks' fins, and
the smell from these was so strong that every one of the three white men
on board was suffering from severe headache. We had a number of native
passengers, and, as they lived in the hold, we could not close the
hatches; they, however, did not mind the nauseating odour in the least.
So, for three or four days, we crawled along, raising the wooded peaks
of Ascension Island (Ponape) one afternoon, and drifting back to the
east so much in the night as to lose them at sunrise. Then followed
another day of a sky of brass above and a steaming wide expanse of oily
sea below, and then, at nightfall, a sweet, cooling breeze from the
north-east, and general happiness, accentuated by a native woman playing
a dissolute-looking accordion, and singing 'Voici le Sabre,' in Tahitian
French. No one cared to sleep that night. Dawn came almost ere we knew
it, and again the blue peaks of Ascension loomed up right ahead.

Just as we had finished coffee, and our attention was drawn to a number
of boobies and whale-birds resting upon some floating substance half a
mile distant, we discovered a couple of sail ahead, and then another,
and another, all whalers, and, as they were under easy-cruising
canvas--being on the sperm whaling ground--we soon began to overhaul
them. One was a small, full-rigged ship, the others were barques. As we
slipped along after them I ran our little vessel close to the floating
object I have before mentioned, and saw it was a ship's lower mast,
which looked, from the scarcity of marine growth upon it, to have
been in the water but a short time. Shortly after, we passed some more
wreckage, all of which evidently had belonged to a good lump of the
vessel.

About eleven o'clock we were close to one of the barques--a four-boat
ship, and also carrying a nine-foot din