I felt aggrieved at the imputation of carelessness, and having never since first I knew him felt any fear of expressing myself clearly, told him that he must have lost it, or it would have been with the others.
Starting from his seat with his face livid with rage, he passionately denied having lost it. Then he strode into his room, and with savage oaths drove out the women, cursing them as the cause of the brig's loss and all his misfortunes.
The next moment he appeared with his arms full of chronometers, and, standing in the doorway, tore the costly instruments from their cases and dashed them to pieces on the coral flagstones at his feet. Then, swearing he would fire the station and roast every one in it, with his hands beating and clutching at the air, his face working with passion, he walked, staggering like a drunken man, to the beach, and threw himself down on a boulder.
Three hours after, taking little Kitty and Toby with me, I found him still there, resting his head on his hand and gazing out upon the sea.
"Captain," I said, "I have come to say farewell."
He slowly raised his head, and with sorrow depicted on his countenance, gave me his hand.
I pressed it and turned away. I packed up my belongings, and then calling to Nellie, told her to give the Captain a note which I left on his table, and with a handshake to each of the wondering girls, made my way through the village, and thence to the bank of a lagoon that runs parallel to the southern coast of Strong's Island. I knew that I could walk to Coquille harbour in about a day, and thither I decided to go, as at the village of Moūt dwelt a man named Kusis, who had several times pressed me to visit him.
It was a bright moonlight night, so that I had no difficulty in making my way along the lonely coast. The lagoon, solemnly still and silver-gleaming, lay between me and the mainland. The narrow strip on the ocean side was not more than half a mile wide; on the lagoon border was a thicket well-nigh impassable.
The mood of melancholy that impressed me at parting with a man to whom, in spite of his faults, I was sincerely attached, weighed heavily. The deep silence of the night, unbroken save by the murmuring plumes of the cocoa-nut palms as they swayed to the breath of the trade-wind, and the ceaseless plaints of the unresting surge, completed the feeling of loneliness and desolation.