“Your feelings do you honour, Captain; but I can assure you that the Kalahua boys are well treated now,” said Prout, as he took the cigar the seaman handed him.
The quiet manner and truthful look in Prout's face made the master of the schooner regard him intently for a few moments, then he said abruptly:
“Do you know Honolulu well?”
Prout did not; his visits there had been few and far between.
“Do you know any decent people here who could take care of my daughter for me till I come back from my next trip?”
“No, Captain, I do not.”
“Take another whisky, sir, and I'll tell you the fix I'm in. You see I'm new to this business. I had a trading station down on one of the Ellice Islands where I've lived for the last twenty years. This schooner came there about six months ago, and the captain died in my house. As the mate couldn't navigate, and I am an old shell-back, I sold out my trading station, took charge of her, brought my daughter aboard and filled the schooner with Line Island labourers.”
“Her mother is dead, I suppose?”
Captain Courtayne coloured and shifted about in his seat. “Well, no, not as far as I know; but, you see, down there in the south-east a man has to change his wives occasionally. For instance, if you marry a Samoa girl you must live in Samoa; she won't leave there to go and live on Nanomea or Vaitupu, where the people have different ideas and customs. And, as we poor traders have to shift about from one island to another sometimes, we can't afford to study a woman's whims.”
Prout grasped the situation at once. “I see; your daughter, then, is your child by a former wife?”