kind of a place; and
the more I drank the lighter my heart. Our last trader had fled the
place at half an hour's notice, taking a chance passage in a labour ship
from up west. The captain, when he came, had found the station closed,
the keys left with the native pastor, and a letter from the runaway,
confessing he was fairly frightened of his life. Since then the firm had
not been represented, and of course there was no cargo. The wind,
besides, was fair, the captain hoped he could make his next island by
dawn, with a good tide, and the business of landing my trade was gone
about lively. There was no call for me to fool with it, Case said;
nobody would touch my things, every one was honest in Falesa, only about
chickens or an odd knife or an odd stick of tobacco; and the best I
could do was to sit quiet till the vessel left, then come straight to
his house, see old Captain Randall, the father of the beach, take
pot-luck, and go home to sleep when it got dark. So it was high noon,
and the schooner was under way, before I set my foot on shore at
Falesa.

I had a glass or two on board; I was just off a long cruise, and the
ground heaved under me like a ship's deck. The world was like all new
painted; my foot went along to music; Falesa might have been Fiddler's
Green, if there is such a place, and more's the pity if there isn't! It
was good to foot the grass, to look aloft at the green mountains, to see
the men with their green wreaths and the women in their bright dresses,
red and blue. On we went, in the strong sun and the cool shadow, liking
both; and all the children in the town came trotting after with their
shaven heads and their brown bodies, and raising a thin kind of a cheer
in our wake, like crowing poultry.

"By the by," says Case, "we must get you a wife."

"That's so," said I; "I had forgotten."

There was a crowd of girls about us, and I pulled myself up and looked
among them like a Bashaw. They were all dressed out for the sake of the
ship being in; and the women of Falesa are a handsome lot to see. If
they have a fault, they are a trifle broad in the beam; and I was just
thinking so when Case touched me.

"That's pretty," says he.

I saw one coming on the other side alone. She had been fishing; all she
wore was a chemise, and it was wetted through. She was young and very
slender for an island maid, with a long face, a high forehead, and a
shy, strange, blindish look, between a cat's and a baby's.