"My husband had heard much of Samoa from my father, and said to me: 'Let
us go there and live'.

"So we came here, and then Frank fell into evil ways, for he was cross
with me because he saw that the pure-blooded Samoan girls were prettier
than me, and had long straight hair and lighter skins. And because he
could not put me away he began to treat me cruelly. And I love him no
more. But yet will I stay by him if he doeth right."

The fates were kind to Mani a few months later. Her husband went to sea
and never returned, and Mani, after waiting a year, was duly married
by the consul to a respectable old trader on Savai'i, who wanted a wife
with a "character"--the which is not always obtainable with a bride in
the South Seas.

CHAPTER VII ~ AT NIGHT

The day's work was finished. Outside a cluster of rudely built
palm-thatched huts, just above the curving white beach, and under the
lengthening shadows of the silent cocos, two white men (my partner and
myself) and a party of brown-skinned Polynesians were seated together
smoking, and waiting for their evening meal. Now and then one would
speak, and another would answer in low, lazy tones. From an open shed
under a great jack-fruit tree a little distance away there came the
murmur of women's voices and, now and then, a laugh. They were the wives
of the brown men, and were cooking supper for their husbands and the two
white men. Half a cable length from the beach a schooner lay at anchor
upon the still lagoon, whose waters gleamed red under the rays of the
sinking sun. Covered with awnings fore and after she showed no sign of
life, and rested-as motionless as were the pendent branches of the lofty
cocos on the shore.

Presently a figure appeared on deck and went for'ard, and then a bright
light shone from the fore-stay.

My partner turned and called to the women, speaking in Hawaiian, and
bade two of them take their own and the ship-keeper's supper on board,
and stay for the night Then he spoke to the men in English.

"Who keeps watch to-night with the other man?"

"Me, sir," and a native rose to his feet.

"Then off you go with your wife and Terese, and don't set the ship on
fire when you and your wife, and Harry and his begin squabbling as usual
over your game of _tahia_."{*}

* "Tahia" is a gambling game played with small round stones;
it resembles our "knuckle-bones".

The man laughed; the women, pretending to be shocked, each placed one
ha