Elizabeth in her turn was puzzled, and it was Mary who first saw the old man's meaning.
"He says that Fangati got him plenty to eat, but disappeared one day, and he was very sorry, and cried."
"No wonder, poor old man!" cried Tommy. "He looks half-starved. There's no one else living in their hut, then?"
"Have you wife, children, friends?" asked Elizabeth.
The old man shook his head.
"Wife he dead long-timey. Chil'en big long way." He waved his arm to indicate distance. "Plen: ah! mikinaly he plen; he all-same gone away; eh! eh! all-same dead."
From this Mary made out that he had a missionary friend who had gone away and might now be dead.
A few more questions satisfied the girls that, as far as he knew, there were no more natives on the island except himself and his granddaughter. Intensely relieved on this score, they were ready to be hospitable, and to Fangati's delight, invited the man to come towards their hut and talk to them.
Seated on the ground in front of the hut with the girls in the entrance, the old man related a story of which they understood little at the time. It was some few days before Mary, thinking over what he had said, and puzzling about it, arrived at something like a coherent narrative. Even then she was only partially successful. What he had tried to explain in his scanty English was as follows.
He had been chief of a small island a day's paddling to the eastward. It was remote from the usual trade-tracks, and for this reason had remained longer in heathendom and cannibalism than most of the Pacific Islands. But a white missionary had at last come and taken up his abode on the island, by whose skill in medicine, earnest teaching, and noble character, Maku and some of his sons had been won over.