![]() ![]() ![]() Separated by 3,500 miles of open ocean, and yet the people spoke a recognizably similar language. ![]() But then, to the crew’s astonishment, “Tupaia stepped forward and addressed the warriors in fluent Tahitian and, to the surprise of everyone present, he was immediately understood.” The ship’s anchor is dropped in a bay in northern New Zealand, a group of armed and unfriendly-looking Maoris promptly gather on the beach and everyone aboard the ship, Cook included, expects a disagreeable outcome. ![]() Thus equipped, and after many weeks of sailing, with Thompson keeping up the gripping pace of this particularly exciting part of the story, Cook comes to what the chapter heading identifies as his “aha moment.” Tupaia traveled with Cook on the Royal Navy’s bark Endeavour (of which more later), gave him written lists of scores of faraway islands with which he was familiar, and drew for him a chart (the original sadly lost) that showed, with uncanny accuracy, where these islands lay, out in an ocean then quite uncharted by European cartographers. ![]()
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