Escaping the Marquesas aboard the leaky Australian whaler Julia, the narrator finds a sick crew, a drunken mate and a captain unfit to command. A near-mutiny lands him, with the wry ship’s doctor Long Ghost, in a Tahitian calaboose, and the two then drift through Papeete and Eimeo among missionaries, consuls, planters and islanders.
Melville’s 1847 follow-up to Typee, comic and sharp-eyed about colonial Polynesia, and a stepping-stone toward Moby-Dick. Download the free EPUB.