were paramount... the
foundation of friendly relations with the people of this Archipelago!...
The engaging manners and modest demeanour of these native ladies were
most commendable. That this embarrassing custom was practised to do us
especial honour we had ample proof."

*****

Chester, the trader, laid down the book and looked curiously at the
title, "A Journal of the Expedition under Don Felipe Tompson, through
the Caroline Islands." It was in Spanish, and had been lent him by one
of the Jesuit Fathers in Ponape.

"Ninety years haven't worked much difference in some of the native
customs," thought he to himself. "What a sensation Don Felipe would have
made lecturing at St. James's Hall on these pleasantly curious customs!
I must ask Tulpe about these queer little functions. She's chock-full of
island lore, and perhaps I'll make a book myself some day."

*****

"Huh!" said Tulpe, Chester's native wife, whipping off her muslin gown
and tossing it aside, as she lay back and cooled her heated face and
bared bosom with a fan, "'tis hot, Kesta, and the sun was balanced in
the middle of the sky when we left Jakoits in the boat, and now 'tis all
but night; and wind there was none, so we used not the sail."

"Foolish creature," said Chester, again taking up his book, "and merely
to see this new white missionary woman thou wilt let the sun bake thy
hands and feet black."

Handsome, black-browed Tulpe flashed her white, even teeth as she
smiled.

"Nay, but listen, Kesta. Such a woman as this one never have I seen. Her
skin is white and gleaming as the inside of the pearl-shell. How
comes it, my white man, that such a fair woman as this marrieth so
mean-looking a man? Was she a slave? Were she a woman of Ponape, and of
good blood, Nanakin the Great would take her to wife."

"Aye," said Chester lazily; "and whence came she and her husband?"

"From Kusaie (Strong's Island), where for two years have they lived, so
that now the woman speaketh our tongue as well as thee."

"Ha!" said the trader quickly; "what are their names?"

She told him, and Chester suddenly felt uncomfortable.

*****

Two years before, when spending a few idle months in Honolulu, he had
met that white woman. She was waiting to be married to the Rev. Obadiah
Yowlman, a hard-faced, earnest-minded, little Yankee missionary, who was
coming up from the Carolines in the _Planet_. There had been some rather
heavy love-passages between her and Cheste