so much as _mata pio'd_ her we shall each
kick thee one hundred times.'"

(_Mata pio_, I must explain, is Samoan for looking "cross-eyed" or
unpleasantly at a person.)

"And Frank was very much afraid, and promised he would no longer harm
me, and held out his hand to them weepingly, but they would not take
it, and swore at him. And then they each gave my babies a quarter of
a dollar, and I, because my heart was glad, gave them each a ring of
tortoiseshell."

"Did they come back, Mani?"

Mani, at heart, was a flirt. She raised her big black eyes with their
long curling lashes to me, and then closed them for a moment demurely.

"Yes," she replied, "they came back. And when I told them that my
husband was now kind to me, and was at work, they laughed, and left for
him a long piece of strong tobacco tied round with tarred rope. And they
said, 'Tell him we will come again by-and-by, and see how he behaveth to
thee'."

"Mani," said in English, as she finished the last of the fish, "why
do you speak Samoan to me when you know English so well? Where did you
learn it? Your husband always speaks French to you."

Mani told me her story. In her short life of two-and-twenty years she
had had some strange experiences.

"My father was Jean Galoup. He was a negro of St. Pierre, in Martinique,
and came to Samoa in a French barque, which was wrecked on Tutuila.
He was one of the sailors. When the captain and the other sailors made
ready to go away in the boats he refused to go, and being a strong,
powerful man they dared not force him. So he remained on Tutuila and
married my mother, and became a Samoan, and made much money by selling
food to the whaleships. Then, when I was twelve years old, my mother
died, and my father took me to his own country--to Martinique. It took
us two years to get there, for we went through many countries--to Sydney
first, then to China, and to India, and then to Marseilles in France.
But always in English ships. That is how I have learned to speak
English.

"We lived for three years in Martinique, and then one day, as my father
was clearing some land at the foot of Mont Pelee, he was bitten by
_fer-de-lance_ and died, and I was left alone.

"There was a young carpenter at St. Pierre, named Francois Renault, who
had one day met me in the market-place, and after that often came to see
my father and me. He said he loved me, and so when my father was dead,
we went to the priest and we were married.