“Tui,” said Lieutenant Carteret, the moment they were alone, “time presses. You speak English so well as to thoroughly understand that which I am now about to tell you?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered, standing before him with clasped hands, “I think so. A white woman who is dead now taught me to read and write English, and my husban' always talk English to me.”
“Good. Then listen to me, my girl. I am Lieutenant Carteret, of H.M.S. Spitfire —that ship out there—sent here with the ship's police to arrest a deserter from the Flycatcher on this station five years ago. This is the man's photograph. He is said to be your husband, and calls himself George Barcom. Now, when I was an officer of the Flycatcher, I knew a man named Charles Parker”—her face went a deadly pallor—“who deserted the ship at the Yasawa Group in Fiji. I can, without doubt, identify this man. But, Tui, I have looked at this photograph when it was held in the hand of my captain, and said that this is not the man whom I knew as Charles Parker. But look at it yourself and tell me—is this the photograph of your husband, and is this man on this island?”
With shaking fingers she took it from him, looked at it, and then raised her face to the officer.
“Is this the doin' of a man called Obadiah Howlman?”
“Yes,” answered the lieutenant, “it is the work of Obadiah Howlman. He brought this photograph to the Admiral only a few days ago.”
A savage gleam came into her eyes. “The brute! I kill him for this some day!”
“That will not save your husband, my girl,” said Carteret; then he waited a moment and added, “whatever it might do later on.”
Suddenly the girl's dark eyes filled with tears, and she laid her hand on the officer's sleeve.
“What is to be done, sir? For God's sake don' you take my husband from me, sir.”