the _Hazeldine_ was out of sight of the _Alfreda_.

I learnt a few months later that the skipper had succeeded in bringing
her into Funafuti Lagoon, where he managed to obtain another crew.

CHAPTER VI ~ "MANI"

Mani was a half-caste--father a Martinique nigger, mother a
Samoan--twenty-two years of age, and lived at Moata, a little village
two miles from Apia in Samoa.

Mani's husband was a Frenchman named Francois Renault, who, when he was
sober, worked as a boat-builder and carpenter, for the German "factory"
at Matafele. And when he was away form home I would hear Mani laughing,
and see her playing with her two dark-skinned little girls, and talking
to them in a curious mixture of Samoan-French. They were merry mites
with big rolling eyes, and unmistakably "kinky" hair--like their mother.

It was a fortnight after the great gale of 15th March, 1889, when the
six German and American warships were wrecked, that Mani came to my
house with a basket of fresh-water fish she had netted far up in a deep
mountain pool. She looked very happy. "Frank," she said, had not beaten
her for two whole weeks, and had promised not to beat her any more. And
he was working very steadily now.

"That is good to hear, Mani."

She smiled as she nodded her frizzy head, tossed her _tiputa_ (open
blouse) over one shoulder, and sat down on the verandah steps to clean
the fish.

"Yes, he will beat me no more--at least not whilst the shipwrecked
sailors remain in Samoa. When they go I shall run away with the
children--to some town in Savai'i where he cannot find me."

"It happened in this way," she went on confidentially: "a week ago two
American sailors came to the house and asked for water, for they
were thirsty and the sun was hot I told them that the Moata water was
brackish, and I husked and gave them two young coco-nuts each. And then
Frank, who had been drinking, ran out of the house and cursed and struck
me. Then one of the sailors felled him to the earth, and the other
dragged him up by his collar, and both kicked him so much that he wept.

"'Doth he often beat thee?' said one of the sailors to me. And I said
'Yes'.

"Then they beat him again, saying it was for my sake. And then one of
them shook him and said: 'O thou dog, to so misuse thine own wife! Now
listen. In three days' time we two of the _Trenton_ will have a day's
liberty, and we shall come here and see if thou hast again beaten thy
wife. And if thou hast but