Sea of Glory

observations. The anchor was lowered, and Wilkes and Passed Midshipman Henry Eld rowed to shore and began connecting the island by triangulation with Malolo, just five miles to the west. “Would to God that we had kept on,” Sinclair would later write.
     
    After completing their survey of the Mamanucas, Alden’s and Underwood’s boat-crews spent the night of July 23 anchored in a bay on the east side of Malolo, bounded on the south by Malololailai, or Little Malolo. That morning the men had only a few yams to divide among them for breakfast. To the east they could see the Flying Fish at anchor in the distance, and when Emmons and his boat-crew arrived an hour or so later, Alden and Underwood were hopeful that he had brought some food with him from the schooner. But Emmons informed them that the Flying Fish was almost completely depleted of provisions. The officers agreed that they urgently needed to find some food for their men.
    That morning, Underwood and a sailor named Joseph Clark were walking the beach, collecting shells, when a group of natives appeared from the island’s interior. With the help of the New Zealander John Sac, who served as an interpreter, Underwood began bartering for food. One of the natives claimed there were four big hogs at Sualib, his village on the southwestern side of Malolo, but they would have to bring a boat around the southern point of the island to pick them up. Underwood insisted that one of the natives, who claimed to be the chief’s son, serve as a hostage to ensure his own men’s safety. The Fijian readily agreed, and Underwood took him back to where Alden’s and Emmons’s boat-crews were eating their meager breakfast on the beach.
    The officers and men were ecstatic to hear that Underwood had found a possible way to get them some food. It was a low, incoming tide, and Underwood volunteered to go to the village on the other side of the island. His boat was considerably smaller than the two cutters, enabling it to sail over shoals that would have grounded the larger craft. To reduce his boat’s draft even further, Underwood had elected to leave many of his muskets aboard the Porpoise. While this was a clear violation of Wilkes’s orders, Underwood was convinced that the risk of attack from the Fijians had been greatly exaggerated. As he had repeatedly told Alden and Emmons, “the best way to gain their confidence was to trust and show that you did not fear them.”
    Underwood prepared to set out for the village. Instead of the ten muskets he had initially been given, he had only three. In addition to the Fijian hostage, he brought along Sac as an interpreter. As Underwood and his men pushed off from the beach, Alden called out to him, “in a jocose manner, to, ‘Look out for the Fijis.’” Emmons added that Underwood had better take a life preserver—after all the water was all of a foot deep.
    The Leopard soon grounded on the shoals that connected the southern tip of Malolo to Malololailai. While Underwood stayed aboard to guard the hostage, his men jumped out and began dragging the boat over the reef. When a group of natives waded out from shore, the sailor Joseph Clark became fearful that they were about to claim the boat in accordance with Fijian salvage customs, especially when some of them insisted on getting into the boat. “[E]very mark of treachery was apparent in their countenances,” Clark insisted.
    As sailors often do when performing difficult work, one of the seamen began singing a chantey as they attempted to drag the boat across the shoals. Soon the natives were singing along with them; a few of them even jumped out of the boat and started helping the sailors pull and push the boat over the shallows. “[T]hey had marked us as their victims,” Clark wrote. “[But] so great was the effect of the music that they not only permitted us to escape, but literally aided us by grasping the rope and attempting to sing with us.” As soon as the boat had reached deeper water, Underwood’s men leapt back in, and after ejecting the Fijians who were still in the boat, they were on their way to the village of Sualib.
    About a quarter mile from the village, the boat grounded on the beach. Leaving the hostage under armed guard in the boat, Underwood and seven men, including Clark and the interpreter John Sac, walked to the village. They found a group of natives waiting for them in the shade of a tree, its branches festooned with an imposing array of war