Typee

will float right and light.'

Mr. Melville would have been more than mortal if he had been
indifferent to his loss of popularity.  Yet he seemed contented
to preserve an entirely independent attitude, and to trust to the
verdict of the future.  The smallest amount of activity would
have kept him before the public; but his reserve would not permit
this.  That reinstatement of his reputation cannot be doubted.  

In the editing of this reissue of 'Melville's Works,' I have been
much indebted to the scholarly aid of Dr. Titus Munson Coan,
whose familiarity with the languages of the Pacific has enabled
me to harmonise the spelling of foreign words in 'Typee' and
'Omoo,' though without changing the phonetic method of printing
adopted by Mr. Melville.  Dr. Coan has also been most helpful
with suggestions in other directions.  Finally, the delicate
fancy of La Fargehas supplemented the immortal pen-portrait of
the Typee maiden with a speaking impersonation of her beauty.

New York, June, 1892.



TYPEE

CHAPTER ONE

THE SEA--LONGINGS FOR SHORE--A LAND-SICK SHIP--DESTINATION OF THE
VOYAGERS--THE MARQUESAS--ADVENTURE OF A MISSIONARY'S WIFE AMONG
THE SAVAGES--CHARACTERISTIC ANECDOTE OF THE QUEEN OF NUKUHEVA

Six months at sea!  Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of
sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale 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 all
exhausted.  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
oranges which hung suspended from our tops and stays--they, too,
are gone!  Yes, they are all departed, and there is nothing left
us but salt-horse and sea-biscuit.  Oh!  ye state-room sailors,
who make so much ado about a fourteen-days' passage across the
Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships
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 of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with
nothing to disturb you but 'those good-for-nothing tars, shouting
and tramping overhead',--what would ye say to our six months out
of sight of land?

Oh!  for a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass--for a snuff
at the fragrance of a handful of the loamy earth!  Is there
nothing fresh around us?  Is there no green thing to be seen?  
Yes, the inside of our bulwarks is painted green; but what a vile
and sickly hue it is, as if nothing bearing even the semblance of
verdure could flourish this weary way from land.  Even the bark
that once clung to the wood 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, bearing him 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 seen again.  But his days
of mourning will be few for Mungo, our black cook, told me
yesterday that the word had at last gone forth, and poor Pedro's
fate was sealed.  His attenuated body will be laid out upon the
captain's table next Sunday, and long before night will be buried
with all the usual ceremonies beneath that worthy individual's
vest.  Who would believe that there could be any one so cruel as
to long for the decapitation of the luckless Pedro; yet the
sailors pray every minute, selfish fellows, that the miserable
fowl may be brought to his end.  They say the captain will never
point the ship for the land so long as he has in anticipation a
mess of fresh meat.  This unhappy bird can alone furnish 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 a period
to thy existence is to be the signal for our deliverance,
why--truth to speak--I wish thy throat cut this very moment; for,
oh!  how I wish to see the living earth again!  The old ship
herself longs to look out upon the land from her hawse-holes once
more, and Jack Lewis said right the other day when the captain
found fault with his steering.

'Why d'ye see, Captain Vangs,' says bold Jack, 'I'm as good a
helmsman as ever put hand to spoke; but none of us can steer the
old lady now.  We can't keep her full and bye, sir; watch her
ever so close, she will fall off and then, sir, when I put the
helm down so gently, and try like to coax her to the work, she
won't take it kindly, but will fall round off again; and it's all
because she knows the land is under the lee, sir, and she won't
go any more to windward.'  Aye, and why should she, Jack?  didn't
every one of her stout timbers grow on shore, and hasn't she