"She will sleep long," he said. "Will it vex thee if I stay here with her till she awakens? See, the sky is clear and the rain hath ceased, and ye need but walk along the beach till——"
"We will wait, Suka," I answered; "we will wait till she awakens, and then return to the village together. How comes it that one so young and tender is left to wander about alone?"
Suka pressed his lips to the forehead of the sleeping girl. "No harm can come to her. God hath afflicted, but yet doth He protect her. And she walketh with Him and His Son Christ, else had she perished long ago, for sometimes she will leave us and wander for many days in the forest or along the shore, eating but little and drinking nothing, for she cannot open a cocoanut with her one hand, and there are no streams of fresh, sweet water here as there be in the fair land of Samoa. And yet God is with her always, always, and she feeleth hunger and thirst but little."
Senior placed his hand on mine and gripped it so firmly that I looked at him with astonishment He was a cold, self-contained man, making no friends, never talking about himself, doing his duty as mate of the Venus as a seaman should do it, and never giving any one—even myself, with whom he was more open than any other man—any encouragement to ask him why he, a highly educated and intelligent man, had left civilisation to waste his years as a wanderer in the South Seas. Still grasping my hand, he turned to me and spoke with quivering lips—
"' She walketh with God! 'Did you hear that? Did you look into her eyes and not see in them what fools would call insanity, and what I know is a knowledge of God above and Christ and the world beyond. 'God has afflicted her,' so this simple-minded native, whom many men in their unthinking moments would call a canting, naked kanaka, says; but God has not afflicted her. He has blessed her, for in her eyes there is that which tells me better than all the deadly-dull sermons of the highly cultured and fashionable cleric, who patters about the Higher Life, or the ranting Salvationist who bawls in the streets of Melbourne or Sydney about the Blood of the Lamb, that there is peace beyond for all.... 'God has afflicted this poor child!' Would that He might so afflict me physically as He has afflicted her—if He but gave me that inner knowledge of Himself which so shines out and is glorified in her face."
His voice, rising in his excitement, nearly awakened her; so Suka, with outstretched hand, enjoined silence.
"She sleeps, dear friends."
A year had come and gone, and the Venus again lay at anchor in the broad lagoon of Funafuti. Suka had come aboard whilst the schooner was beating up to the anchorage, and said that there had been much sickness on the island, that many people had died, and that Susâni with other children was tali mate (nearly dead). Could we give them some medicine? for it was a strong sickness this, and even the "thick"{*} man or woman withered and died from it. Soon they would all be dead.
* I.e., strong, stout.
Alas! we could not help them much, for our medicine chest was long since depleted of the only drug that would have been of service. At every island in the group from Nanomea southwards we had found many of the people suffering and dying from a malignant type of fever introduced by an Hawaiian labour vessel. Then an additional misfortune followed—a heavy gale, almost of hurricane force, had set in from the westward and destroyed countless thousands of cocoanut trees, so that with the exception of fish, food was very scarce.