n, his face
working so he couldn't speak no more, he gripped hands with me, and then
with John Rau, and not forgetting the Nieue steward, and then he went
down the forward ladder, and I'm blest if he didn't put his arm round
the Chink, and burst out sobbing--yes, sir, like a great overwrought
girl, sitting on the tool chest, limp as a rag, and wiping his eyes with
the cuff of his blue-striped panjammers, the Chinaman, patting him like
he might a dog, saying, "Poor captain! Never you mind, captain! She all
lite now, captain," while the prisoners broke out in a big gabble of how
they were saved, and piped up with a hymn.

He wasn't the man to take anything for granted, however, and after he
had sort of pulled himself together and got his second wind, so to
speak, he cast loose a couple more with a message that he had to have a
letter on paper from Mrs. Tweedie herself, countersigned by the king,
that she was at home, safe, and no harm done. He might have saved
himself the trouble, for they hadn't been gone ten minutes before she
came off herself, queening it in the stern of the king's great _alia_,
seventy feet long, with Tweedie and Maunga, and the princes, and eighty
men chorusing to the paddles, with drums aft, and a young boy dancing in
the bow and keeping time with a rifle. Except for her paleness, which
was like marble, and the bloody marks of the sinnet on her pretty
wrists, you wouldn't have taken her for much different than usual; and
she skipped up the ladder as sprightly as you please, and made a bee
line for Elijah Coe like a schoolgirl running to her pa for the
holidays.

She wanted to throw herself on her knees and kiss his hands; and when he
forced her up, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, saying
he was her preserver, and how he had saved her from worse than death,
and so overflowing and grateful and outspoken that nobody knew where to
look, least of all the captain, who turned all colors, and couldn't say
anything but "You're welcome," like a ninny.

We cleared a little space for Tweedie to pray in, which was his way of
celebrating, and couldn't very well be prevented, and the king followed
with a speech what he'd do to Afiola when he caught him--the tarnation
liar! The crew came off, swimming in ones and twos to beg for pardon,
and the prisoners were unbound and given three crates of biscuit and
three barrels of pork and some boat sails to wrap the corpses in, and
there was more hurrah