Mark's Pages

"The following day the ship was in Fare harbour in Huahine. The chief Ori was as welcoming as ever. His people were less so. The next day saw Forster's servant, Ernst Scholient, 'a feeble man', set on during a botanical excursion by a group of bravos who would have stripped him had he not been rescued by a companion, an assault all too reminiscent of that on Sparrman at the same place in the previous year; while two men in a canoe tried to cut away the anchor buoy. These two were chased off by a musket shot and the canoe destroyed by way of example. The other matter was not so easily dealt with. A council of chiefs, protesting their own innocence, which Cook had not doubted, advised him to kill the assailants: that was all very well, he answered, but who was going to produce them? - and the subject was dropped. In spite of this advice had their trade goods stolen; another, themselves acting in some obscure way with reckless imprudence, were deprived of all their belongings, including their guns, by a mob from whom they had to be rescued by the interposition of the chiefs. The property was restored, but Cook complained to Ori of 'repeated outrages'." — J.C. Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook