his tomahawk, and eagerly watching me at work. He had killed a man,
before our arrival on Aniwa; and had also startled my wife by suddenly
appearing from amongst the boxes, and causing her to run for life. On
seeing him hovering so alarmingly near, tomahawk in hand, I saluted him,
"Nelwang, do you want to speak to me?"

"Yes, Missi," he replied; "if you will help me now, I will be your
friend forever."

I answered, "I am your friend. That brought me here and keeps me here."

"Yes," said he very earnestly, "but I want you to be strong as my
friend, and I will be strong for you!"

I replied, "Well, how can I help you?"

He quickly answered, "I want to get married, and I need your help."

I protested,--"Nelwang, you know that marriages here are all made in
infancy, by children being bought and betrothed to their future
husbands. How can I interfere? You don't want to bring evil on me and my
wife and child? It might cost us our lives."

"No! no! Missi," earnestly retorted Nelwang. "No one hears of this, or
can hear. Only help me now. You tell me, if you were my circumstances,
how would you act?"

"That's surely very simple," I answered. "Every man knows how to go
about that business, if he wants to be honest! Look out for your
intended, find out if she loves you and the rest will follow
naturally,--you will marry her."

"Yes," argued Nelwang, "but just there my trouble comes in!"

"Do you know the woman you would like to get?" I asked, wishing to bring
him to some closer issue.

"Yes," replied he very frankly, "I want to marry Yakin, the Chiefs'
widow up at the inland village, and that will break no infant
betrothals."

"But," I persevered, "do you know if she loves you or would take you?"

"Yes," replied Nelwang; "one day I met her on the path and told her I
would like to have her for my wife. She took out her ear-rings and gave
them to me, and I know thereby that she loves me. I was one of her late
husband's men; and if she had loved any of them more than she loved me,
she would have given them to another. With the ear-rings she gave me her
heart."

"Then why," I insisted, "don't you go and marry her?"

"There," said Nelwang gravely, "begins my difficulty. In her village
there are thirty young men for whom there are no wives. Each of them
wants her, but no one has the courage to take her, for the other
nine-and-twenty will shoot him!"

"And if you take her," I suggested, "the disappointed thirty will