"Have you a husband, Madame?" enquired Willatopy eagerly.
"Yes," replied Madame with hardihood. "I have a fine big husband, and I love him very much."
"I am sorry," said Willatopy, simply. "I think that I should like to marry you myself. I am a grown man and very rich. I would have built a very fine hut for you on my island, and I would have taken one of my girls to be your maiden."
"You are not very old, Willatopy, and it will be better fun for you not to be married just yet. My own fine big husband would not wish me to take another one, not even you."
"No," assented Willatopy, true to the strictly monogamous code of the Straits. "One time, one husband. But it is a great pity. You are very beautiful, and I love you. The Skipper he called me a nigger, Madame, but you do not call me a nigger."
"I didn't," growled Ching, to whom the whole scene was highly offensive. "But if it wasn't for Madame here I would soon show you your proper place."
"Willatopy is half white," explained Madame. "He is not an ordinary native. And you said yourself he was a daisy of a pilot."
"So he is. As a pilot and down with the men in the foc's'le he would be in his proper place. But here, talking like this before you, he makes me sick. If you will excuse me, Madame, I will go to my chart-room." Ching stumped off with a sour face, but the more politic Ewing remained. He did not propose that the novel attractions of Willatopy should have the field entirely to themselves.
Willatopy, though half white in blood and quite passably well taught by his late father and in the mission schools on Murray Island, had all the inconsequence of a native. He would jump about from one subject to another, like a bee among flowers, sipping here and there, and then skipping on forgetful of where he had last been. He continued to stare at Madame in deep admiration—never in his small experience had he seen a woman with hair so richly red, eyes of so dazzling a violet, or a figure so graciously indicated by the clinging folds of a modern dress. His idea of woman had hitherto been of the crudest—black hair and eyes, and brown limbs fully revealed. But though he continued to be absorbed by the feminine mystery of Madame—there is no mystery about nakedness—he forgot all about his recent matrimonial suggestions.