Being aware that this feeling existed, she absented herself for some time, and when she again appeared, she said a favourite of hers had taken them away, whom she had beaten and dismissed; 'but she seemed conscious,' says Cook, 'that she had no right to be believed; she discovered the strongest signs of fear, yet she surmounted it with astonishing resolution, and was very pressing to be allowed to sleep with her attendants in Mr.Banks's tent; in this, however, she was not gratified.' Sir Joseph might have thought that, if he complied with her request, his breeches might be in danger of following the other articles of his dress.
The Otaheitans cannot resist pilfering.

'I must bear my testimony,' says Cook, 'that the people of this country, of all ranks, men and women, are the arrantest thieves upon the face of the earth; but,' he adds, 'we must not hastily conclude that theft is a testimony of the same depravity in them that it is in us, in the instances in which our people were sufferers by their dishonesty; for their temptation was such, as to surmount what would be considered as a proof of uncommon integrity among those who have more knowledge, better principles, and stronger motives to resist the temptations of illicit advantage; an Indian among penny knives and beads, and even nails and broken glass, is in the same state of mind with the meanest servant in Europe among unlocked coffers of jewels and gold.' Captain Wallis has illustrated the truth of this position by an experiment he made on some persons, whose dress and behaviour indicated that they were of a superior cast.

'To discover what present,' he says, 'would most gratify them, I laid down before them a Johannes, a guinea, a crown piece, a Spanish dollar, a few shillings, some new halfpence, and two large nails, making signs that they should take what they liked best.

The nails were first seized with great eagerness, and then a few of the halfpence, but the silver and gold lay neglected.' Here then it might with truth be said was discovered The goldless age, where gold disturbs no dreams.
But their thirst after iron was irresistible; Wallis's ship was stripped of all the nails in her by the seamen to purchase the good graces of the women, who assembled in crowds on the shore.

The men even drew out of different parts of the ship those nails that fastened the cleats to her side.