Sea of Glory

with their boat axes.” With two of the canoes in tow, Emmons returned to the Porpoise just before midnight.
    That night a large number of sharks were seen swimming about the schooner and brig. “[The sharks] must have had their fill of Fiji meat,” Sinclair wrote, “as they refused even to taste a piece of fat pork that was put over for them.”
    Belowdecks, the officers and men settled into their berths and hammocks and tried, as best they could, to sleep.
     
    Early the next morning a group of natives appeared on the beach near where the schooner was anchored. Wilkes and an interpreter got in his gig and pulled for shore. It was low tide, and as they approached the edge of the reef, the men withdrew, leaving a woman with a white chicken in her hands, which she offered to Wilkes as a token of peace. She also had several articles that had belonged to Underwood and Henry.
    Wilkes took the personal effects but refused the bird. He had learned that it was Fijian custom for a defeated people to sue for mercy before “the whole of the attacking party, in order that all might be witnesses.” He felt that if he didn’t insist on these terms, the people of Malolo would “never acknowledge themselves conquered.” Wilkes told the woman that he would assemble his men on a hill in the southern part of the island around noon. If her chiefs and her people did not appear soon after, the attack would begin again.
    Late that morning Wilkes and close to a hundred officers and men climbed the hill. “The day was perfectly serene,” he wrote, “and the island, which but a few hours before, had been one of the loveliest spots in creation, was now entirely laid waste, showing the place of the massacre, the ruined town, and the devastated plantations. The eye wandered over the dreary waste to the beautiful expanse of waters beyond and around, with the long lines of white sparkling reefs, until it rested, far in the distance on the small green spot where we had performed the last rites to our murdered companions. A gentle breeze, which was blowing through the casuarina trees, gave out the moaning sound that is uttered by the pines of our own country, producing a feeling of depression inseparable from the occasion, and bringing vividly to my thoughts the sad impression which this melancholy and dreadful occurrence would bring upon those who were far away.”
    About four P.M. Wilkes heard the sound of “distant wailings.” A long line of natives could be seen making their way over the hills toward them. When the line stopped at the foot of the hill, Wilkes threatened to destroy them with his war rockets if they did not climb the hill to do obeisance. Falling to their hands and knees, with their faces toward the ground, the natives crawled up the hill to within thirty feet of Wilkes and his officers. As the natives behind him uttered “piteous moans,” an old man stood and begged Wilkes for mercy, “pledging that they would never do the like to a white man.” Offering Wilkes two young girls, which were quickly refused, the old man said that they had lost close to eighty men, and that they considered themselves a conquered people.
    Through an interpreter, Wilkes lectured them about the power of the white man, insisting that if anything like this should ever occur again, he would return to the island and exterminate them. He also insisted that early the next day they must come to the town of Arro with all the provisions they could gather and that they would spend the entire day filling casks of water for his ships. Wilkes later claimed that “this was according to their customs, that the conquered should do work for the victors.”
    The next morning the Flying Fish and the Porpoise were brought to Arro, where seventy natives were already waiting for them. By the end of the day, three thousand gallons of water had been loaded into the brig and schooner, along with twelve pigs and about three thousand coconuts. The natives also produced Underwood’s pocket watch, which had been melted in the fire at Sualib, and Henry’s eyeglasses.
    With the task of revenge completed, Wilkes was left with nothing but the enormity of his loss. For the next few days he would be, by his own admission, “unfit for further duty.”
     
    On Friday, July 31, Reynolds was aboard the Vincennes, at anchor beside the Peacock off Vanua Levu, talking with William May. May was at work on a chart of the harbors of Tutuila in Samoa, which Reynolds had