Part 19 (1/2)

He took us forthwith to one of the villagers' houses, and told the people to attend to us, and see that we wanted for nothing. He further insisted that I should not attempt to render him any a.s.sistance until I was perfectly recovered. I could only nod acquiescence, as my side was paining me terribly.

A warm grasp of my hand and a kind look to Lalia and he was gone.

One of the Kusaie women in the house told us that a message had gone up to the king, and that a native doctor named Srulik would soon come down and cure my back with leaves in the island fas.h.i.+on. She also informed Lalia that her husband had gone away in a canoe to look for her body, with two natives, but that he had come across a case of gin, and was now dead drunk on the opposite side of Utw. It is hardly to be expected that a young girl could feel love for a man of her husband's years; but tears of humiliation coursed down her cheeks when the woman added that he had already asked an Ocean Island girl to be wife to him.

About four o'clock in the afternoon messengers arrived from Ll with a message of regret from the king to Captain Hayston, and an invitation for me to Chabral harbour, so that I could get better quickly; and he could send his own boat for me. But I did not want to be separated from the Captain, and said I would come and visit him when I got permission.

Queen S sent me a large basket of cooked pigeons and fruit. Taking out a few for myself and Lalia, I sent the rest to the Captain, who was glad of them for his weary and hungry men.

For the next few days I suffered fearfully with the pain in my side, and though the Captain visited me twice a day, and tried all he could to cheer me up, I fell into a hopeless state of despondency. All the time Lalia had remained in the house, her husband, not having finished the case of gin, never coming near her. Her stepsons and daughters disliked her, and therefore avoided the house where we were staying.

The Captain told me that her arm was cut to the bone, and that the trade chest that had fallen against her had injured one foot badly. Never as long as I live shall I forget the unwearied attention and kindness which the poor girl showed me during our stay in the village. Though lame, and with only the use of one arm, she never left my side, and strove by every means in her power to allay the agony I endured--answering to my petulance and irritability only with smiles and kind words.

The Captain told me that he had saved a good many articles from the wreck; that the big trade chest had come ash.o.r.e, and that the money and firearms were in a safe place. A quant.i.ty of liquor had also been saved, and already some fierce fights had taken place, but the traders had in most instances behaved well, and a.s.sisted him to maintain order. He told me also that Lalia's husband had taken away a lot of liquor into the impa.s.sable forest that lines the north side of Utw, and, with two of his sons and several women, was having a big carouse.

”The virtuous and Christian Strong's islanders had,” he said, ”stolen about a thousand dollars' worth of trade that had been washed ash.o.r.e.

But,” he added quietly, ”I'll talk to them like a father as soon as I get a house built, and knock the devil out of those Pleasant islanders besides. They seem disposed to cut all our throats.”

A couple of days after this, Hayston came to me with a letter from Lalia's husband, which he handed to me. I don't know whether amus.e.m.e.nt or indignation predominated as I read it, written as it was on a piece of account paper.

STRONG'S ISLAND, _March 11th_.

Supercargo _Leonora_ Brig.

DEAR FRIEND.--I heer my wife have took up with you, and say she do'ent want anny mo-ar truck with her lawful husban. Captin Hayston say No, but she must be cotton strong to you, not to come to me when I look for her neerly one week amung two thousan sharks, as I can prove, but I bare you no ill-wil, for I got anuther wife, but you must give me the three rings she ware, and I warn you I'm not responsble.--I remane, your true and sincere friend.

_P.S._--Lal can read as well as me, and you can let her read this. She is a good girl, and I bear no ill-wil.

The Captain laughed when I read out this precious doc.u.ment, and told me not to take matters so seriously. He then sat down and chatted for half-an-hour, saying that as soon as he had finished saving the wreckage, he had called the traders together, and laid certain proposals before them to which they had agreed.

These were that the traders and their followers would consider themselves under his direction, in which case he would engage to provide food for them during their stay on the island. They were not to have any commercial dealings with the people of Strong's Island, and their natives were to a.s.sist the crew of the _Leonora_ in erecting houses for their joint accommodation. After which he would endeavour to charter a vessel, probably a pa.s.sing whales.h.i.+p, to take the whole lot of us to Providence Island. Should no vessel call in six months' time, he would take a boat's crew and make for Mill Lagoon, six hundred miles distant.

If the ketch I had brought down from Samoa was still afloat, he would bring her back, and take the people in detachments to Providence Island.

He feared, however, that no more whalers would be calling in for ten months, as the _St. George_ and _Europa_ were the last of the fleet which was making, vi j.a.pan, for the Siberian coast, ”right whaling.”

He left us then, saying he had established a little republic on the narrow strip of land that lay on the sea-side of Utw village.

Then I gave Lalia the letter I had received from her reprobate husband.

She read it in silence and returned it to me, but I could see that the heartless old scoundrel's words had wounded her deeply. She took off some rings from her fingers, and sent them to the Captain to hand to the old man. ”Do you think,” she said, ”that I can ever get back to Rapa-nui?” (Easter Island.)

Her father, she went on to say, was dead, and her mother had been among those unfortunate people who in 1866 were seized by three Peruvian slavers and taken to work the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands.

She, when about fourteen, had married one of the captains of one of the s.h.i.+ps owned by the great firm of Brander of Tahiti. The tales she told me of his brutality and ill-usage during his drunken fits of pa.s.sion moved me to sincere pity. The unmitigated rascal deliberately sold his child wife to an American (or a man who called himself one), and by him she was taken to San Francisco and delivered into yet more hopeless slavery. Here she made the acquaintance of a Tahitian half-caste. She and this girl succeeded in escaping and paying their pa.s.sages to Tahiti, where they landed penniless and starving.

From Tahiti she was taken by her present husband.

CHAPTER XI

A KING AND QUEEN