Mark's Pages

"Still the goat was not returned, but cook refused to give up his demand for restitution. After two days of stalemate, he sent word to Maheine that the Englishmen would burn every canoe on the island if the goat was not given up. To drive home his point, he ordered the ships' carpenters to break up three or four canoes lying at the head of the harbor and stow the wood on board to use later in building a house for Mai. Then he and several others walked along the coast, hacking and burning more canoes and houses and shooting hogs. Cook put the total destruction at six or eight canoes, but Bayley claimed the toll was twenty canoes, fifteen to twenty houses, and twenty to thirty hogs; both Clerke and Edgar thought it would take months or even years for the islanders to recover from the damage."

— Lynn Withey, Voyages of Discovery: Captain Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific

This is the Cook of the third voyage, a very different character to the first two and far more successful voyages.