This happened during a moment when she had let go her mother’s hand.

“Like children they easily tired of what had caught their attention, so next it was Phoebe about whom they began to crowd.

‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘these savages are one thing when they come alongside your vessel an’ try to trade you coconuts for knives and beads and calico, but they’re another when they outnumber you ten to one an’ you haven’t got any gimcracks to humor ‘em with, so I’m not for takin’ chances ‘way off here where they might be cannibals like as not!’”Īwesome, terrific, it gets way worse, because the natives do eventually confront the Prebles and are, indeed, pretty hostile, and the only thing that has a chance of placating them is the ultimate gimcrack (?) herself: ‘You’ve had more experience with natives than any of the rest of us.’ Bill looked serious and stared off to sea thoughtfully. “‘Think the chances are they’ll be friendly, Bill?’ the Captain was asking. But things go south when the ship wrecks and the Prebles and some of their crewmates wash up on a desert island, where the only people around are, you guessed it, terrifying natives: From there, Field backs off of the Injuns a little bit and chronicles Hitty’s first family, the Prebles, leaving on an eleven-month whaling voyage, as the patriarch finally gets the chance to captain his own ship. In the first twenty pages of Hitty, we get some hints that we have a rough go ahead of us, as Hitty’s original owners drop her in the woods (later recovering her) so they can dash away and avoid running into a group of scary “Injuns” on the road.

Rachel field hitty