“All right,” said Lieutenant T———, “bear a hand with the cocoanuts now, and I'll tell the captain what you say;” and then to Hallam, “If this calm keeps up, Hallam, I'm afraid the ship will either have to anchor or tow off the land—she's drifting in fast.”
In an hour the boat was filled with cocoanuts, and Lieutenant T——— sent her off to the ship with a note to the captain, remaining himself with Hallam, another leading seaman named Lacy, and five bluejackets. Presently the chief, in his strange, halting English, asked the officer to come to his house and sit down and rest while his wife prepared food for him. And as they walked the native's eyes still sought the face of Hallam the boatswain.
His wife was a slender, graceful girl, and her modest, gentle demeanour as she waited upon her husband himself impressed the lieutenant considerably.
“Where did you learn to speak English?” the officer asked his host after they had finished.
He answered slowly, “I been sailor man American whaleship two year;” and then, pointing to a roll of soft mats, said, “You like sleep, you sleep. Me like go talk your sailor man.”
Hallam, morose and gloomy, had left the others, and was sitting under the shade of a toa-tree, when he heard the sound of a footstep, and looking up saw the dark-brown, muscular figure of the native chief beside him.
“Well,” he said, surlily, “what the h—— do you want?”
The man made him no answer—only looked at him with a strange, eager light of expectancy in his eyes, and his lips twitched nervously, but no sound issued from them. For a moment the rude, scowling face of the old seaman seemed to daunt him. Then, with a curious choking sound in his throat, he sprang forward and touched the other man on the arm.
“Father! Don't you know me?”