to marvel at. A band of three or four inches in
breadth, completely white, bordered the face; the rest, a very
luxuriant head, was jet black and dressed into a perfectly regular and
smooth roundish form, projecting everywhere beyond the white inner
border. He had an uncouth necklace, made of what it was impossible to
say, except that part of it looked like shells and part like some
animal's teeth; rings of one or two colours were on his fingers; he
carried no weapon. But in his huge, powerful black frame, uncouth
hair-dressing, and strange uncoveredness, he was a sufficiently
terrible object to unused eyes. In Tonga the ladies had seen no such
sight.

"Do shut the door!" said Mrs. Amos. "He may come this way, and there is
nobody that knows how to speak to him."

Eleanor shut the door, and looked round at her friend with a smile.

"I am foolish!" said Mrs. Amos laughing; "but I don't want to see him
just yet--till there is somebody to talk to him."

The door being fast, Eleanor applied herself to a somewhat large
knot-hole she had long ago discovered in it; one which she strongly
suspected the skipper had fostered, if not originated, for his own
convenience of spying what was going on. Through this knot-hole Eleanor
had a fair view of a good part of the deck, savage and all. He was
gesticulating now and talking, evidently to the captain and Mr. Amos,
the former of whom either did not understand or did not agree with him.
Mr. Amos, of course, was in the former condition. Eleanor watched them
with absorbed interest; when suddenly this vision was crossed by
another, that looked to her eyes much as a white angel might, coming
across a cloud of both moral and physical blackness. Mr. Rhys himself;
his very self, and looking very much like it; only in a white dress
literally, which in England she had never seen him wear. But the white
dress alone did not make the impression to her eyes; there was that air
of freshness and purity which some people always carry about with them,
and which has to do with the clear look of temperance as well as with
great particularity of personal care, and in part also grows out of the
moral condition. In three breathless seconds Eleanor took note of it
all, characteristics well known, but seen now with the novelty of long
disuse and with the background of that huge black savage, to whom Mr.
Rhys was addressing some words, of explanation or exhortation--Eleanor
could not tell which. She notice