At This Time We Were Preparing To Warp Farther Into
The Bay, And I Was Going In A Boat, To Look For The Most Convenient Place
To Moor The Ship In.
Observing too many of the natives on board, I said to
the officers, "You must look well after these
People, or they will
certainly carry off something or other." I had hardly got into the boat,
before I was told they had stolen one of the iron stanchions from the
opposite gang-way, and were making off with it. I ordered them to fire over
the canoe till I could get round in the boat, but not to kill any one. But
the natives made too much noise for me to be heard, and the unhappy thief
was killed at the third shot. Two others in the same canoe leaped
overboard, but got in again just as I came to them. The stanchion they had
thrown over board. One of them, a man grown, sat bailing the blood and
water out of the canoe, in a kind of hysteric laugh; the other, a youth
about fourteen or fifteen years of age, looked on the deceased with a
serious and dejected countenance; we had afterwards reason to believe he
was his son.[1]
At this unhappy accident, all the natives retired with precipitation. I
followed them into the bay, and prevailed upon the people in one canoe to
come alongside the boat, and receive some nails, and other things, which I
gave them; this in some measure allayed their fears.
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