“Nay, friend. Not such things as thou hast seen—such as the sun at midnight, of which thou hast told me, and which had any man but thou said it, I would have cried 'Liar!'”
Marsh laughed—“Yet 'tis true, old Kala-hoi. I have seen the sun at midnight, many, many times.”
“Aye. Thou sayest, and I believe. Now, let me uncover my oven so that we may eat. 'Tis a fine fat mullet.”
After we had eaten, the kindly old man brought us a bowl of water in which to lave our hands, and then a spotless white towel, for he had associated much with Europeans in his younger days and had adopted many of their customs. On Sundays he always wore to church coat, trousers, shirt, collar and necktie and boots (minus socks) and covered his bald pate with a wide hat or fala leaf. Moreover, he was a deacon.
Presently we heard voices, and a party of young people of both sexes appeared. They had been bathing in the stream and were now returning to the village. In most of them I recognised “customers” of mine during the day—they were carrying baskets and bundles containing the goods bought from the ship. They all sat down around us, began to make cigarettes of strong twist tobacco, roll it in strips of dried banana leaf, and gossip. Then Kala-hoi—although he was a deacon—asked the girls if they would make us a bowl of kava. They were only too pleased, and so Kala-hoi again rose, went to his house and brought out a root of kava, the kava-bowl and some gourds of water, and gave them to the giggling maidens who, securing a mat for themselves, withdrew a little distance and proceeded to make the drink, the young men attending upon them to-cut the kava into thin, flaky strips, and leaving us three to ourselves. Night had come, and the bay was very quiet. Here and there on the opposite side lights began to gleam through the lines of palms on the beach from isolated native houses, as the people ate their evening meal by the bright flame of a pile of coco-nut shells or a lamp of coco-nut oil.
Marsh wanted the old man to talk.
“How long since is it that thy wife and sons died, Kala-hoi?”
The old man placed his brown, shapely hand on the seaman's knee, and answered softly:—
“'Tis twenty years”.
“They died together, did they not?”