It was the rashest act of my life; for never did cocoa-nut come nearer getting demolished than mine did then.

With the stock of his gun, the old warder fetched a tremendous blow, which I managed to dodge; and then falling back, succeeded in paddling out of harm's reach.
He must have been dumb; for never a word did he utter; but grinning from ear to ear, and with his white cotton robe streaming in the moonlight, he looked more like the spook of the island than anything mortal.
I tried to effect my object by attacking him in the rear--but he was all front; running about the place as I paddled, and presenting his confounded musket wherever I went.

At last I was obliged to retreat; and to this day my vow remains unfulfilled.
It was a few days after my repulse from before the walls of Hotoo-Otoo that I heard a curious case of casuistry argued between one of the most clever and intelligent natives I ever saw in Tahiti, a man by the name of Arheetoo, and our learned Theban of a doctor.
It was this:--whether it was right and lawful for anyone, being a native, to keep the European Sabbath, in preference to the day set apart as such by the missionaries, and so considered by the islanders in general.
It must be known that the missionaries of the good ship Duff, who more than half-a-century ago established the Tahitian reckoning, came hither by the way of the Cape of Good Hope; and by thus sailing to the eastward, lost one precious day of their lives all round, getting about that much in advance of Greenwich time.

For this reason, vessels coming round Cape Horn--as they most all do nowadays--find it Sunday in Tahiti, when, according to their own view of the matter, it ought to be Saturday.

But as it won't do to alter the log, the sailors keep their Sabbath, and the islanders theirs.
This confusion perplexes the poor natives mightily; and it is to no purpose that you endeavour to explain so incomprehensible a phenomenon.