For two weeks after Mrs. Clinton was carried up the whale-ship's side she hovered between life and death. Then, very, very slowly, she began to mend. A month more and then the Manhattan hove-to off the verdant hills and shining beaches of Rotumah Island.
“You cannot do better than go ashore here,” the captain had said to Adair a few hours before. “I know the natives well. They are a kind, amiable race of people, and many of the men, having sailed in whale-ships, can speak English. The women will take good care of Mrs. Clinton” (Adair had long since told him hers and his own true story); “have no fear of that. In five months I ought to be back here on my way to Port Jackson, and I'll give her a passage there. If she remains on board she will most likely die; the weather is getting hotter every day as we go north, and she is as weak as an infant still. As for yourself and old Michael, you will both be safe here on Rotumah. No King's ship has ever touched here yet; and if one should come the natives will hide you.”
That evening, as the warm-hearted, pitying native women attended to Mrs. Clinton in the chiefs house, Adair and Terry watched the Manhattan's sails disappear below the horizon.
There for six months they lived, and with returning health and strength Marion Clinton learned to partly forget her grief, and to take interest in her strange surroundings. Ever since they had landed Adair and old Michael Terry had devoted themselves to her, and as the months went by she grew, if not happy, at least resigned. To the natives, who had never before had a white woman living among them, she was as a being from another world, and they were her veriest slaves, happy to obey her slightest wish. At first she had counted the days as they passed; then, as the sense of her utter loneliness in the world beyond would come to her, the thought of Adair and his unswerving care for and devotion to her would fill her heart with quiet thankfulness. She knew that it was for her sake alone he had remained on the island, and when the six months had passed, her woman's heart told her that she cared for him, and that “goodbye” would be hard to say.
But how much she really did care for him she did not know, till one day she saw him being carried into the village with a white face and blood-stained garments. He had been out turtle-fishing, the canoe had capsized on the reef, and Adair had been picked up insensible by his native companions, with a broken arm and a deep jagged cut at the back of his head.
Day by day she watched by his couch of mats, and felt a thrill of joy when she knew that all danger was past.
One afternoon while Adair, still too weak to walk, lay outside his house thinking of the soft touch and gentle voice of his nurse, there came a roar of voices from the village, and a pang shot through his heart—the Manhattan was back again.
But it was not the Manhattan, and ten minutes afterwards four or five natives, headed by old Terry, white-faced and trembling, came rushing along the path.