“I'm very glad, father; I would rather go away with you to sea in the Mana than stay in a strange place.”
But Marie Courtayne did not go away; for next morning her father, through Prout, learned that the French Sisters were willing to take her as a boarder till the schooner returned, and so to them she went, with her tender mouth twitching, and her eyes striving to keep back the tears that would come as she bade her father goodbye.
“You'll go and see my little Marie sometimes, I hope, Mr. Prout?” said Courtayne, as he bade farewell to the manager of Kalahua.
Prout murmured something in reply, and then the captain of the Mana and he parted.
Three months later the American cruiser Saranac brought the news that she had spoken the labour schooner Mana, Captain Courtayne, off the island of Marakei, in the Gilbert Group, “all well, and wished to be reported at Honolulu.” After that she, her captain and crew, and the two hundred Kanaka labourers she had on board, were never heard of again.
For nearly a year Prout and Marie Courtayne waited and hoped for some tidings of the missing ship, but none came. And every now and then, when business took him to Honolulu, Prout would call at the Mission School and try to speak hopefully to her.
“He is dead,” she would say apathetically, “and I wish I were dead, too. I think I shall die soon, if I have to live here.”
Then Prout, who had grown to love her, one day plucked up courage to tell her so, and asked her to be his wife.