The Sandwich Islands had become the halfway house of the Pacific for
the fur traders. How fur traders--riff-raff adventurers from earth's
ends beyond the reach of law--may have acted among these simple people
may be guessed from the conduct of Cook's crews; and Cook was a strict
disciplinarian. Those who sow to the wind, need not be surprised if
they reap the whirlwind. White men, welcomed by these Indians as gods,
repaid the native hospitality by impressing natives as crews to a
northern climate where the transition from semitropics meant almost
certain death. For a fur trader to slip into Hawaii, entice women
aboard, then scud off to America where the victims might rot unburied
for all the traders cared--was considered a joke. How the joke caused
Captain Cook's death the world knows; and the joke was becoming a
little frequent, a little bold, a little too grim for the white
traders' sense of security. The Sandwich Islanders had actually formed
the plot of capturing every vessel that came into their harbors and
holding the crews for extortionate ransom.
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