Typee A Romance Of The South Seas Novel

Author : Herman Melville
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 182 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (11 download)

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Download or read book Typee written by Herman Melville and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SEA-LONGINGS FOR SHORE-A LAND-SICK SHIP-DESTINATION OF THEVOYAGERS-THE MARQUESAS-ADVENTURE OF A MISSIONARY'S WIFE AMONGTHE SAVAGES-CHARACTERISTIC ANECDOTE OF THE QUEEN OF NUKUHEVASix months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the spermwhale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific-the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were allexhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam. Those glorious bunches of bananas, which once decorated our stern and quarter-deck, have, alas, disappeared! and the delicious orangeswhich hung suspended from our tops and stays-they, too, are gone! Yes, they are all departed, andthere is nothing left us but salt-horse and sea-biscuit. Oh! ye state-room sailors, who make so muchado about a fourteen-days' passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations andhardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking champagne-punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets ofmahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but 'those good-fornothing tars, shouting and tramping overhead', -what would ye say to our six months out of sightof land?Oh! for a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass-for a snuff at the fragrance of a handful ofthe loamy earth! Is there nothing fresh around us? Is there no green thing to be seen? Yes, the insideof our bulwarks is painted green; but what a vile and sickly hue it is, as if nothing bearing even thesemblance of verdure could flourish this weary way from land. Even the bark that once clung to thewood we use for fuel has been gnawed off and devoured by the captain's pig; and so long ago, too, that the pig himself has in turn been devoured.There is but one solitary tenant in the chicken-coop, once a gay and dapper young cock, bearinghim so bravely among the coy hens.But look at him now; there he stands, moping all the day long on that everlasting one leg of his.He turns with disgust from the mouldy corn before him, and the brackish water in his little trough.He mourns no doubt his lost companions, literally snatched from him one by one, and never seenagain. But his days of mourning will be few for Mungo, our black cook, told me yesterday that theword had at last gone forth, and poor Pedro's fate was sealed. His attenuated body will be laid outupon the captain's table next Sunday, and long before night will be buried with all the usualceremonies beneath that worthy individual's vest. Who would believe that there could be any one socruel as to long for the decapitation of the luckless Pedro; yet the sailors pray every minute, selfishfellows, that the miserable fowl may be brought to his end. They say the captain will never point theship for the land so long as he has in anticipation a mess of fresh meat. This unhappy bird can alonefurnish it; and when he is once devoured, the captain will come to his senses. I wish thee no harm, Pedro; but as thou art doomed, sooner or later, to meet the fate of all thy race; and if putting aperiod to thy existence is to be the signal for our deliverance, why-truth to speak-I wish thythroat cut this very moment; for, oh! how I wish to see the living earth again! The old ship herselflongs to look out upon the land from her hawse-holes once more, and Jack Lewis said right theother day when the captain found fault with his stee