“Bully 'Ayes was the man to make the Kanakas work!” said Lying Bill Pincher. “I used to be on Penryn Island and that was 'is old 'ang-out. 'Ayes was a pleasant man to meet. 'E was 'orspitable as a 'ungry shark to a swimming missionary. Bald he was as a bloomin' crab, stout and smiling.
“'E 'ad two white wives a-setting in his cabin on the schooner, and they called it the parlor. Smart wimmen they was, and saved 'is life for 'im more 'n once. 'E 'd get a couple of chiefs on board by deceiving 'em with rum, and hold 'em until 'is bloomin' schooner was chock-a-block with copra. The 'ole island would be working itself to death to free the chiefs. Then when 'e 'ad got the copra, 'e 'd steal a 'undred or two Kanakas and sell 'em in South America.
“'E was smart, and yet 'e got 'is'n. 'Is mate seen him coming over the side with blood in his eye, and batted 'im on 'is conch as 'is leg swung over the schooner's bul'ark. 'Ayes dropped with 'is knife between 'is teeth and 'is pistols in both 'ands.
“'E'd murdered 'undreds of white and brown and black men, and 'e was smart, and 'e got away with it. But 'e made the mistake of not having made a friend of 'is right 'and man.”
CHAPTER XXIX
The white man who danced in Oomoa Valley; a wild-boar hunt in the hills; the feast of the triumphant hunters and a dance in honor of Grelet.
Grelet had gone in a whale-boat to Oia, a dozen miles away, to collect copra, and I was left with an empty day to fill as I chose. The house, the garden, and the unexplored recesses of Oomoa Valley were mine, with whatever they might afford of entertainment or adventure. Every new day, wherever spent, is an adventure, but when to the enigmatic morning is added the zest of a strange place, it must be a dull man who does not thrill to it.
I began the day by bathing in the river with the year-old Tamaiti, Grelet's child. Her mother was Hinatiaiani, a laughing, beautiful girl of sixteen years, and the two were cared for by Pae, a woman of forty, ugly and childless. Hinatiaiani was her adopted daughter, and Pae had been sorely angered when Grelet, whose companion she had been for eighteen years, took the girl. But with the birth of Tamaiti, Pae became reconciled, and looked after the welfare of the infant more than the volatile young mother.
Tamaiti had never had a garment upon her sturdy small body, and looked a plump cherub as she played about the veranda, crawling in the puddles when the rain drove across the floor.
“The infant has never been sick,” Grelet had said. “One afternoon I was starting for the river to bathe, when that girl was making herself a bed of cocoanut-leaves under the house. She said she expected the baby, as, when she climbed a cocoanut-tree a moment earlier, she had felt a movement. She would not lie in a bed, but, like her mother before her, must make her a nest of cocoanut-leaves. When I returned from my bath, Tamaiti was born. She was chopping wood next day—the mother, I mean.”