Sitting beside him with her head on his shoulder, she told him how that morning she had accompanied a party of native women to a village some miles distant on a fishing excursion, and knew nothing of the ship till she was returning and met Sergeant Matthews.
“And now,” she said, with a soft laugh, “neither King's ship nor whale-ship shall ever part us.”
Another month went by all too swiftly now for their new-found happiness, and then the lumbering old Manhattan came at last, and that night her captain and Adair sat smoking in the latter's thatched hut.
“That,” said the American, pointing to a heavy box being borne past the open door by two natives, “that box is for Mrs. Clinton. I just ransacked the Dutchmen's stores at Amboyna, and bought all the woman's gear I could get. How is she? Old Terry says she's doing 'foine.'”
“She is well, thank you,” said Adair, with a happy smile, and then rising he placed his hand on the seaman's shoulder, while his face reddened and glowed like a boy's.
“Oh, that's it, is it?” said the American with a good-natured laugh. “Well, I'm right pleased to hear it. Now look here. The Manhattan is a full ship, and I'm not going to Port Jackson to sell my oil this time. I'm just going right straight home to Salem. And you and she are coming with me; and old Parson Barrow is going to marry you in my house; and in my house you and your wife are going to stay until you settle down and become a citizen of the best country on the earth.”
And the merry chorus of the sailors, as they raised the anchor from its coral bed, was borne across the bay to old Terry, who sat watching the ship from the beach. No arguments that Adair and the captain used could make him change his mind about remaining on the island. He was too old, he said, to care about going to America, and Rotumah was a “foine place to die in—'twas so far away from the bloody redcoats.”
As he looked at the two figures who stood on the poop waving their hands to him, his old eyes dimmed and blurred.