“Let it be as you say,” Gabriel responded, inwardly well pleased that Maria was as enthusiastic about the islands as he was.
“I must go now,” he said finally, “but I shall see you again in the morning. Boa noite minha querida,” and he disappeared into the darkness.
II.
The next morning, Manuel rose earlier than his usual early hour, and waited for Gabriel.
“Ah, my boy,” he said walking toward the road as Gabriel finally made an appearance, “if you are as slow as that on the plantation, your boss will hurry you up with his big black whip.”
“The bosses do not use whips any more,” Gabriel responded.
“They do not? How do you know?”
“The American said so.”
“The American lies. I have a brother there who went over with the first lot of Portuguese, which left on the Priscilla nearly twenty-five years ago, to Honolulu. The tales which he used to tell me, when he came back, of how the bosses, lunas, they call them there, used to treat them, would simply scare you. No, sir, no plantations for me, sir; and if you knew what I know, you would say the same thing.”
“Yes, I know what you know; how the lunas used to take up the hoes which the men were using, and bang them on the head with the handles just because they felt like it. I know, too, that they used to tie the men up to the fence and whip them with their snake whips just because the men were a trifle slow, and I know, too, that things have changed within the last years. With the coming of Annexation, the plantation laborer does not suffer what he used to, so to the plantations for me.”