“And now,” he said, “I must go. If I stay longer it may spoil our plans by making Jinaban's friend suspicious. Give me the bottle of gin, and I'll carry it so that every one can see it as I walk through the village. And you must get all your men out of the way by the time I come back. They might shoot me, but the women will be too frightened.”
Palmer went to his trade room and returned with a large bottle of Hollands, which he gave to Porter, together with a box of revolver cartridges; these the half-caste carefully concealed in the bosom of his singlet. Then, shaking hands with the trader and his wife, he walked out of the house, down the steps, and along the path to the village.
“Parma,” said Letanë to her husband, as they watched the seaman disappear among the coco-palms, “dost think this man will be true to us in this thing?”
“Aye,” replied the trader, “sure am I of his good faith; for he it was who four years ago, single-handed, fought two hundred of the wild man-eaters of the Solomon Islands, when they captured the ship in which he sailed, and slew every man on board but himself. Twenty-and-three of those devils of kai tagata (cannibals) did he kill with his Winchester rifle from the fore-top of the ship, although he was slashed in the thigh with a deep knife wound, and was faint from loss of blood. And then when the rest had fled in their canoes he came down and steered the ship away from the land and sailed her in safety to a place called Rubiana where white men dwell.”
“Ah-h-h!” and Letanë's dark eyes opened wide in admiration.
An hour later Frank Porter, with an half-emptied bottle of liquor placed before him on the matted floor, was sitting in a house in Jinaban's village, surrounded by a number of young men and women.
“Come,” he said, with drunken hilarity, and speaking in the Ponapé dialect, which is understood by the people of Las Matelotas, “come, drink with me;” and pouring out some of the liquor he offered it with swaying hand to the man nearest him; “drink, I tell thee, for when this bottle is empty then shall I make the white man give me more.”
“Bah!” said a tall, dark-skinned girl, whose head was encircled with a wreath of red and yellow flowers, and who stood with her rounded arms folded across her bare bosom, “thou dost but boast. How canst thou make Parma give thee liquor, if, as thou sayest, thou hast no money? Is he a child to be frightened by loud words—which are but born in the belly of that” and she laughed and pointed contemptuously at the bottle beside him.
The half-caste looked at her with drunken gravity.