“It’s Fa’avao,” says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the floor into the farthest corner.
“You ain’t afraid of her?” I cried.
“Me ’fraid!” cried the captain. “My dear friend, I defy her! I don’t let her put her foot in here, only I suppose ’s different to-day, for the marriage. ’s Uma’s mother.”
“Well, suppose it is; what’s she carrying on about?” I asked, more irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the captain told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise because I was to marry Uma. “All right, old lady,” says I, with rather a failure of a laugh, “anything to oblige. But when you’re done with my hand, you might let me know.”
She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and stopped; the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she came in, and must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I followed her to the door she had already vanished.
“These are rum manners,” said I.
“’s a rum crowd,” said the captain, and, to my surprise, he made the sign of the cross on his bare bosom.
“Hillo!” says I, “are you a Papist?”
He repudiated the idea with contempt. “Hard-shell Baptis’,” said he. “But, my dear friend, the Papists got some good ideas too; and tha’ ’s one of ’em. You take my advice, and whenever you come across Uma or Fa’avao or Vigours, or any of that crowd, you take a leaf out o’ the priests, and do what I do. Savvy,” says he, repeated the sign, and winked his dim eye at me. “No, sir!” he broke out again, “no Papists here!” and for a long time entertained me with his religious opinions.
I must have been taken with Uma from the first, or I should certainly have fled from that house, and got into the clean air, and the clean sea, or some convenient river—though, it’s true, I was committed to Case; and, besides, I could never have held my head up in that island if I had run from a girl upon my wedding-night.