“What a curious story!” began the supercargo, after an interval of some minutes, when he saw that Lupton, usually one of the merriest-hearted wanderers that rove to and fro in Polynesia, seemed strangely silent and affected, and had turned his face from him.
He waited in silence till the trader chose to speak again. Away to the westward, made purple by the sunset haze of the tropics, lay the ever-hovering spume-cloud of the reef of North-West Point—the loved haunt of Lupton's guest—and the muffled boom of the ceaseless surf deepened now and then as some mighty roller tumbled and crashed upon the flat ledges of blackened reef.
At last the trader turned again to the supercargo, almost restored to his usual equanimity. “I'm a pretty rough case, Mr.———, and not much given to any kind of sentiment or squirming, but I would give half I'm worth to have him back again. He sort of got a pull on my feelin's the first time he ever spoke to me, and as the days went on, I took to him that much that if he'd a wanted to marry my little Teremai I'd have given her to him cheerful. Not that we ever done much talkin', but he'd sit night after night and make me talk, and when I'd spun a good hour's yarn he'd only say, 'Thank you, Lupton, good-night,' and give a smile all round to us, from old Màmeri to the youngest tama, and go to bed. And yet he did a thing that'll go hard agin' him, I fear.”
“Ah,” said Trenton, “and so he told you at the last—I mean his reason for coming to die at Mururea.”
“No, he didn't. He only told me something; Peese told me the rest. And he laughed when he told me,” and the dark-faced trader struck his hand on his knee. “Peese would laugh if he saw his mother crucified.”
“Was Peese back here again, then?” inquired Trenton.
“Yes, two months ago. He hove-to outside, and came ashore in a canoe. Said he wanted to hear how his dear friend Brown was. He only stayed an hour, and then cleared out again.9'
“Did he die suddenly?” the supercargo asked, his mind still bent on Lupton's strange visitor.