We Washed And Mended Our Clothes In The Morning,
And Spent The Rest Of The Day In Reading And Writing.
Several of us
wrote letters to send home by the Lagoda.
At twelve o'clock the
Ayacucho dropped her fore topsail, which was a signal for her
sailing. She unmoored and warped down into the bight, from which
she got under way. During this operation, her crew were a long
time heaving at the windlass, and I listened for nearly an hour to
the musical notes of a Sandwich Islander, called Mahannah, who
"sang out" for them. Sailors, when heaving at a windlass, in order
that they may heave together, always have one to sing out; which is
done in a peculiar, high and long-drawn note, varying with the
motion of the windlass. This requires a high voice, strong lungs,
and much practice, to be done well. This fellow had a very peculiar,
wild sort of note, breaking occasionally into a falsetto. The sailors
thought it was too high, and not enough of the boatswain hoarseness
about it; but to me it had a great charm. The harbor was perfectly
still, and his voice rang among the hills, as though it could have
been heard for miles. Toward sundown, a good breeze having
sprung up, she got under weigh, and with her long, sharp head
cutting elegantly through the water, on a taught bowline, she
stood directly out of the harbor, and bore away to the southward.
She was bound to Callao, and thence to the Sandwich Islands,
and expected to be on the coast again in eight or ten months.
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