The gibe passed unheeded, save for a sudden light that leapt into the eyes of the younger man, then quickly died away.
“Let us part in peace,” he said. “We will never meet again. Only tell me one thing—is my mother dead?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God for that,” he murmured. Then without another word the outcast turned away and disappeared among the cocoa-palms.
The second boat from the Pleiades brought the captain, and as he and the lieutenant stood and talked they watched the natives carrying down the cocoa-nuts.
“Hurry them up, Hallam,” said Lieutenant T———; “the tide is falling fast. By the by, where is that fellow Lacy; I don't see him about?”
As he spoke a woman's shriek came from the chiefs house, which stood some distance apart from the other houses, and a tall brown man sprang out from among the other natives about the boats and dashed up the pathway to the village.
“Quick, Hallam, and some of you fellows,” said Captain W———, “run and see what's the matter. That scoundrel, Lacy, I suppose, among the women,” he added, with a laugh, to the lieutenant.
The two officers followed the men. In a few minutes they came upon a curious scene. Held in the strong arms of two stout seamen was the native chief, whose heaving chest and working features showed him to be under some violent emotion. On the ground, with his head supported by a shipmate, lay Lacy, with blackened and distorted face, and breathing stertorously. Shaking with fear and weeping passionately as she pressed her child to her bosom, the young native wife looked beseechingly into the faces of the men who held her husband.