"Nothing fresh, I suppose?" he asked in her language.
She shook her head. "None of our people have been near us to-day."
"Well, Polly,"—for so her white master had christened her, her native appellation being too long for ordinary conversation,—"it is a bad business, and I am sorry for it; but when these fellows have sailed away it will soon come all right again."
"Polly hopes so," she said. "Polly very much afraid."
"Well, you had better go to-morrow and see them, and tell them, as I have told them already, we are very sorry for the goings on of these people, but it is not our fault. You have no fear that they will hurt you, have you? Because if so, don't you go."
"They no hurt Polly now," she said; "they know that if I do not come back you be on guard."
"Well, I don't think there is any danger at present, but it is as well to be ready. Do you take down to the canoe three or four dozen cocoanuts and four or five big bunches of plantains, and you may as well take three or four gourds of water. If we have to take to the boat, will you go with me or stay here?"
"Polly will go with her master," the woman said; "if she stay here they will kill her."
"I am glad enough for you to go with me, Polly," he said. "You have been a good little woman, and I don't know how I should get on without you now; though why they should kill you I don't know, seeing that your head chief gave you to me himself."
"Kill everything belonging to white man," she said quietly; and the man knew in his heart that it would probably be so. She put his supper on the table and then made several journeys backwards and forwards to the canoe, which lay afloat in a little cove a couple of hundred yards away. When she had done she stood at the table and ate the remains of the supper.