The Cannibal Islands: Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas

Captain Cook now felt that the safety of the party depended on prompt, decisive action, for the more he exercised forbearance the more did the savages threaten. He therefore fired his second barrel, which was loaded with ball, and killed one of the foremost.

A general attack with stones immediately followed. This was met by a discharge of muskets from the marines and the people in the boats. Contrary to expectation, the natives stood the fire with great firmness. From the accounts given of the transaction, it would appear that all the marines had discharged their muskets—none having reserved fire. This was a fatal mistake, because, before they had time to reload the natives rushed upon them in overwhelming numbers, and with fearful yells. Then followed a scene of indescribable horror and confusion.

Captain King, Cook’s intimate friend, says, in regard to this closing scene, that four of the marines were cut off among the rocks in their retreat, and fell a sacrifice to the fury of the enemy; three more were dangerously wounded. The lieutenant, who had received a stab between the shoulders with a pahooa, having fortunately reserved his fire, shot the man who had wounded him just as he was going to repeat the blow. The unfortunate Captain Cook, when last seen distinctly, was standing at the water’s edge, calling out to the men in the boats to cease firing and to pull in. If it be true, as some of those who were present have imagined, that the marines and boatmen had fired without his orders, and that he was desirous of preventing further bloodshed, it is not improbable that his humanity, on this occasion, proved fatal to him; for it was remarked that while he faced the natives none of them had offered him any violence, but that having turned about to give his order to the boats, he was stabbed in the back, and fell with his face into the water.

On seeing him fall the savages gave a great shout, rushed upon him, and dragged him on shore. They then surrounded him, and, snatching the daggers out of each other’s hands, showed a savage eagerness to have a share in his destruction.

“Thus,” continues King, “fell our great and excellent commander! After a life of so much distinguished and successful enterprise, his death, as far as regards himself, cannot be reckoned premature, since he lived to finish the great work for which he seems to have been designed, and was rather removed from enjoyment than cut off from the acquisition of glory. How sincerely his loss was felt and lamented by those who had so long found their general security in his skill and conduct, and every consolation under their hardships in his tenderness and humanity, it is neither necessary nor possible for me to describe, much less shall I attempt to paint the horror with which we were struck, and the universal dejection and dismay which followed so dreadful and unexpected a calamity.”

In commenting on Captain Cook’s services, the same gentleman says:

“Perhaps no science ever received greater additions from the labours of a single man than geography has done from those of Captain Cook. In his first voyage to the South Seas he discovered the Society Islands; determined the insularity of New Zealand, discovered the Straits which separate the two islands, and are called after his name, and made a complete survey of both. He afterwards explored the eastern coast of New Holland, hitherto unknown, to an extent of twenty-seven degrees of latitude, or upwards of two thousand miles.” In succeeding years he settled the disputed point of the existence of a great southern continent traversing the ocean there between the latitudes of 40 degrees and 70 degrees in such a way as to show the impossibility of its existence, “unless near the pole, and beyond the reach of navigation.” (We may be permitted, in these days of general advancement, mental and physical, to doubt whether any part of the globe is absolutely “beyond the reach of navigation!”) He discovered also the islands of New Caledonia and Georgia, and the Sandwich Islands; explored the western coasts of North America into the frozen regions, and ascertained the proximity of the two great continents of Asia and America. In short,—to use the words of his biographer, which compress the nature and value of the great navigator’s services into a small and easily comprehended point—“if we except the sea of Amur and the Japanese Archipelago, which still remain imperfectly known to Europeans, he has completed the hydrography of the habitable globe.”

Captain Cook has passed away, and the generation of men, with those whom he benefited and those who slew him, has gone to its account, but the coral islands remain as they were of old, resplendent with the beautiful works of God, though not, as of old, marred so terribly by the diabolical devices of man. “Cannibal Islands” some of them still are, without doubt, but a large proportion of them have been saved from heathen darkness by the light of God’s Truth as revealed in the Holy Bible, and many thousands of islanders—including the descendants of those who slew the great Captain of the last generation—have enrolled themselves under the banner of the “Captain of our salvation,” and are now, through God’s mercy, clothed and in their right mind.

The End