"Yet how can I kill your husband," said Logi, carefully, "and if I do kill him and Sandi comes here, how may I escape his cruel vengeance? I think it would be better if you gave him death in his chop, for then none would think evilly of me."
She was not distressed at his patent selfishness. It was understandable that a man should seek safety for himself, but she had no intention of carrying out her lover's plan.
She returned to her husband, and found him so far amiable that she escaped a further beating. Moreover, he was communicative.
"Woman," he said, "to-morrow I go a long journey because of certain things I have seen, and you go with me. In a secret place, as you know, I have hidden my new canoe, and when it is dark you shall take as much fish and my two little dogs and sit in the canoe waiting for me."
"I will do this thing, lord," she said meekly.
He looked at her for a long time.
"Also," he said after a while, "you shall tell no man that I am leaving, for I do not desire that Sandi shall know, though," he added, "if all things be true that Ofesi says, he will know nothing."
"I will do this as you tell me, lord," said the woman.
He rose from the floor of the hut where he had been squatting and went out of the hut.
"Come!" he said graciously, and she followed him to the beach and joined the crowd of villagers who watched two white men labouring under difficulties.