“So we came here, and then Frank fell into evil ways, for he was cross with me because he saw that the pure-blooded Samoan girls were prettier than me, and had long straight hair and lighter skins. And because he could not put me away he began to treat me cruelly. And I love him no more. But yet will I stay by him if he doeth right.”
The fates were kind to Mâni a few months later. Her husband went to sea and never returned, and Mâni, after waiting a year, was duly married by the consul to a respectable old trader on Savai'i, who wanted a wife with a “character”—the which is not always obtainable with a bride in the South Seas.
CHAPTER VII ~ AT NIGHT
The day's work was finished. Outside a cluster of rudely built palm-thatched huts, just above the curving white beach, and under the lengthening shadows of the silent cocos, two white men (my partner and myself) and a party of brown-skinned Polynesians were seated together smoking, and waiting for their evening meal. Now and then one would speak, and another would answer in low, lazy tones. From an open shed under a great jack-fruit tree a little distance away there came the murmur of women's voices and, now and then, a laugh. They were the wives of the brown men, and were cooking supper for their husbands and the two white men. Half a cable length from the beach a schooner lay at anchor upon the still lagoon, whose waters gleamed red under the rays of the sinking sun. Covered with awnings fore and after she showed no sign of life, and rested-as motionless as were the pendent branches of the lofty cocos on the shore.
Presently a figure appeared on deck and went for'ard, and then a bright light shone from the fore-stay.
My partner turned and called to the women, speaking in Hawaiian, and bade two of them take their own and the ship-keeper's supper on board, and stay for the night. Then he spoke to the men in English.
“Who keeps watch to-night with the other man?”
“Me, sir,” and a native rose to his feet.
“Then off you go with your wife and Terese, and don't set the ship on fire when you and your wife, and Harry and his begin squabbling as usual over your game of tahia."{*}