That
day sailors were landed for water and set fire to the village of the
cocoanut groves to drive assailants back. How quickly human nature may
revert to the beast type! When the white sailors returned from this
skirmish, they carried back to the ships with them, the heads of two
Hawaiians they had slain. By Saturday, the 20th, masts were in place
and the boats ready to sail. Between ten and eleven o'clock in the
morning, a long procession of people was seen filing slowly down the
hills preceded by drummers and a white flag. Word was signalled that
Cook's bones were on shore to be delivered. Clerke put out in a small
boat to receive the dead commander's remains--from which all flesh had
been burned. On Sunday, the 21st, the entire bay was tabooed. Not a
native came out of the houses. Silence lay over the waters. The
funeral service was read on board the _Resolution_, and the coffin
committed to the deep.
{208} A curious reception awaited the ships at Avacha Bay, Kamchatka,
whence they now sailed. Ismyloff's letter commending the explorers to
the governor of Avacha Bay brought thirty Cossack soldiers floundering
through the shore ice of Petropaulovsk under the protection of pointed
cannon.
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