se. Marnoo immediately
started up, hurriedly enjoining me not to address him again, and as I
valued my safety, to refrain from all further allusion to the subject of
my departure; and then, in compliance with the order of the determined
chief, but not before it had again been angrily repeated, he withdrew to
a distance.

I now perceived, with no small degree of apprehension, the same savage
expression in the countenances of the natives, which had startled me
during the scene at the Ti. They glanced their eyes suspiciously from
Marnoo to me, as if distrusting the nature of an intercourse carried on,
as it was, in a language they could not understand, and they seemed to
harbour the belief that already we had concerted measures calculated to
elude their vigilance.

The lively countenances of these people are wonderfully indicative of
the emotions of the soul, and the imperfections of their oral language
are more than compensated for by the nervous eloquence of their looks
and gestures. I could plainly trace, in every varying expression of
their faces, all those passions which had been thus unexpectedly aroused
in their bosoms.

It required no reflection to convince me, from what was going on, that
the injunction of Marnoo was not to be rashly slighted; and accordingly,
great as was the effort to suppress my feelings, I accosted Mehevi in
a good-humoured tone, with a view of dissipating any ill impression
he might have received. But the ireful, angry chief was not so easily
mollified. He rejected my advances with that peculiarly stern expression
I have before described, and took care by the whole of his behaviour
towards me to show the displeasure and resentment which he felt.

Marnoo, at the other extremity of the house, apparently desirous of
making a diversion in my favour, exerted himself to amuse with his
pleasantries the crowd about him; but his lively attempts were not so
successful as they had previously been, and, foiled in his efforts, he
rose gravely to depart. No one expressed any regret at this movement,
so seizing his roll of tappa, and grasping his spear, he advanced to
the front of the pi-pi, and waving his hand in adieu to the now silent
throng, cast upon me a glance of mingled pity and reproach, and flung
himself into the path which led from the house. I watched his receding
figure until it was lost in the obscurity of the grove, and then gave
myself up to the most desponding reflections.

CHAPTE