As we all took turns at this--two by two--in due course it came to Long Ghost and myself, for the sailors invariably linked us together.

In such an enterprise, I somewhat distrusted the doctor, for he was no sailor, and very tall; and a canoe is the most ticklish of navigable things.

However, it could not be helped; and so we went.
But a word about the canoes before we go any further.

Among the Society Islands, the art of building them, like all native accomplishments, has greatly deteriorated; and they are now the most inelegant, as well as the most insecure of any in the South Seas.

In Cook's time, according to his account, there was at Tahiti a royal fleet of seventeen hundred and twenty large war canoes, handsomely carved, and otherwise adorned.