speaking in his own tongue.

"How is it, Tiaki (Jack), that I hear thee tell these thy friends that
we of the brown skins have but shallow hearts and forget quickly? Dost
think that if, when thy time comes, and thou goest, that thy wife and
child will not grieve? Hast thou not heard of our white man who, when he
died, yet left his name upon our hearts?--and yet we were in those days
heathens and followers of our own gods."

The trader nodded kindly, and turned to us. "Do you want to hear a
yarn about one of the old style of white men that used to live like
fighting-cocks in Samoa? Felipe here has rounded on me for saying that
his countrymen soon forget, and has brought up this wandering _papalagi
tafea_ (beachcomber) as an instance of how the natives will stick to a
man once he proves himself a man."

II.

"It was the tenth year after the Cruel Captain with the three ships had
anchored in Apia,{*} and when we of Aleipata were at war with the people
of Fagaloa. In those days we had no white man in this town and longed
greatly to get one. But they were few in Samoa then; one was there at
Tiavea, who had fled from a man-of-war of England, one at Saluafata, and
perhaps one or two more at Tutuila or Savaii--that was all.

* Commodore Wilkes, in command of the famous United States
Exploring Expedition, 1836-40. He was a noted martinet, and
was called _Le alii Saua_ (the Cruel Captain).

"My father's name was Lauati. He, with his mother, lived on the far side
of the village, away from the rest of the houses. There were no others
living in the house with them, for my father's mother was very poor, and
all day long she laboured--some-times at making mats, and sometimes at
beating out _siapo_ (tappa) cloth. As the mats were made, and the tappa
was bleached, and figures and patterns drawn upon it, she rolled them up
and put them away overhead on the beams of the house, for she was
eaten up with poverty, and these mats and tappa cloth was she gathering
together so that she might be able to pay for my father's, tattooing.
And as she worked on the shore, so did my father toil on the sea, for
although he was not yet tattooed he was skilled more than any other
youth in _sisu atu_ (bonita catching). Sometimes the chief, who was a
greedy man, would take all his fish and leave him none for himself to
take home to his house. Sometimes he would give him one, and then my
father would cut off a piece for his mother