'You are jealous because I speak to another girl besides you.'
'No, I am not. I am not one to harbour jealousy. Whom I trust I trust with my whole heart. Whom I believe I believe with my entire soul. I know you too well to be jealous. I know as well that you could not be false to me in thought or in act as I know my truth to you. I cannot doubt you, for had I thought it possible that you would give me occasion to doubt, I could not have loved you.'
'Sheer off!' exclaimed George, looking over his shoulder. 'Here comes the old woman.'
The old woman appeared, scrambling on deck, her cap-frills bristling about her ears, like the feathers of an angry white cockatoo.
'What is all this? By jaggers! where is Phoebe Musset? What have you done with her? Where have you put her? What were those screams about?'
'Sheer off while you may,' whispered De Witt; 'the old woman is not to be faced when wexed no more than a hurricane. Strike sail, and run before the wind.'
'What have you done with the young woman? Where is she? Produce the corpse. I heard her as she shruck out.'
'She insulted me,' said Mehalah, still agitated by passion, 'and I flung her overboard.'
Mrs. De Witt rushed to the bulwarks, and saw the dripping damsel being carried—she could not walk—from the Strand to her father's house.
'You chucked her overboard!' exclaimed the old woman, and she caught up a swabbing-mop. 'How dare you? She was my visitor; she came to sip my grog and eat my natives at my hospitable board, and you chucked her into the sea as though she were a picked cockleshell!'