Or perhaps, from yet
further back, sounds and scents of England and his
childhood might assail him: the merry clamour of
cathedral bells, the broom upon the foreland, the song
of the river on the weir.
It is bold water at the mouth of the bay; you can steer
a ship about either sentinel, close enough to toss a
biscuit on the rocks. Thus it chanced that, as the
tattooed man sat dozing and dreaming, he was startled
into wakefulness and animation by the appearance of a
flying jib beyond the western islet. Two more
headsails followed; and before the tattooed man had
scrambled to his feet, a topsail schooner, of some
hundred tons, had luffed about the sentinel, and was
standing up the bay, close-hauled.
The sleeping city awakened by enchantment. Natives
appeared upon all sides, hailing each other with the
magic cry "Ehippy"--ship; the Queen stepped forth on
her verandah, shading her eyes under a hand that was a
miracle of the fine art of tattooing; the commandant
broke from his domestic convicts and ran into the
residency for his glass; the harbour-master, who was
also the gaoler, came speeding down the Prison Hill;
the seventeen brown Kanakas and the French boatswain's
mate, that make up the complement of the war-schooner,
crowded on the forward deck; and the various English,
Americans, Germans, Poles, Corsicans, and Scots--the
merchants and the clerks of Tai-o-hae--deserted their
places of business, and gathered, according to
invariable custom, on the road before the club.
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