“I may have to fight for you again.”
“I be happy. Boys much want bukalo feast. I too—plaps. But boys love bukalo.”
“Mlada, I will not be friendly with you if you eat human flesh,” said Antonio.
“Ah! den I plefer you, capitan, to any bukalo. I lub you. I ask you maid Leona to be one wife to me; she say she not can do. I speakee her no more. She is my sistuh, she say.”
Antonio smiled, and the king went on in a more mournful voice now. “I am soon to be old. Much fight I care not for. I hab no son, no daughter, no fliend—just you. I cannot eat de big pearl.”
“No, now you can’t take it to the happy hunting-ground with you.”
“No, no. Oh no. But, capitan, I hab ten oder wife. I would lub them more if all dress like Ooeya, but not so fine. Ooeya is de youngest and best. One spirit wife is Ooeya.”
“Well,” said Antonio, “as you say, the big pearl is of no use to you when dead: I will tell you what I shall do. I will get Leona to make two dresses each for your ten wives, and I will give you a rich store of bright cloth, and a thousand beads, all for the big pearl. And, wait, I will give you something else still more marvellous. Wait, Mlada.”
He went to the door of the grass hall, and beckoned to a sailor, who came in and deposited something on a couch.
It was a storage battery, with long tube and bell light.