Tobi Island Tattoo
that he for all his incompetence would add further to their misery by his chicanery.
One day Holden was informed that his white skin was an abomination to the natives who promised to tatoo him like Tobi men (69). After the tatoo sessions were finished and Holden had been tatooed from torso to toes, he began to talk his way off the island. He told Parabua, one of the more reasonable Tobians that if he were put on the next ship he would return iron, plentiful food and other items.
Parabua thought that this was a workable arrangement for he told Holden, if "you go to America and do not come back to Tobi, I will tell our god, Yarri and you will die" (75). That is how Holden talked his way off the island. He was on the next ship that called.
Six of his shipmates had succumbed to hunger, despair and disease on Tobi Island. When Holden eventually made it back to America aboard the British barquentine, Britannia, he told his story to everyone who would listen and ultimately caught the ear of Congress. This august body authorized another expedition for the purpose of discovering stranded American sailors in the Pacific. The expedition was to be accompanied by Holden himself. However on June 5, 1836, the Vincenes, an American sloop-of-war arrived in Hampton Roads with Horatio Davis and James Meador on board, the last two surviving Mentor shipwreck victims.
http://cas.gmu.edu/~tobi/tobithenandnow/ifiriingris.htm">Holden's story
Meredith, J.C. The Tattooed Man, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1958.
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