to
watch their wild dances on the moonlit beach--as had been the custom of
those white men who had dwelt on the island before him--was but as one
afflicted with some mental disease, and therefore to be both pitied and
feared. At first, indeed, when he had landed, carrying his child in his
arms, to bargain with Patiaro, the chief, that the people should build
him a house, the women of the island had clustered around him as he
stepped out of the boat, and with smiles upon their faces, extended
their arms to him for the child. But no answering smile lit up the man's
rugged features, though, to avoid the appearance of discourtesy (to
which all island races are so keenly sensitive) he gave the infant into
the keeping of old Malineta, the mother of the chief.

Patiaro, the chief, holding the stranger's right hand in both his own,
looked searchingly into his calm, deep-set eyes with that dignified
curiosity which, while forbidding a native to put a direct question to
an utter stranger, yet asks it by the expression of his face. But Prout,
whose anxious glance followed the movements of the grey-haired mother
of the chief, as she pressed his child to her withered bosom, seemed to
notice not his questioning look.

Following the stranger's gaze, the chief broke the silence:

"'Tis my mother, _ariki papalagi_.{*} who carries thy child--Malineta,
the mother of Patiaro, the chief of Nukutavau, he who now speaks to
thee. And I pray thee have no fear for the little one."

* White gentleman.

*****

The quiet, dignified courtesy with which the chief addressed him
recalled the white man to himself, and a pleasant smile lit up the
native's features when the stranger answered him in Tokelau--the _lingua
franca_ of the equatorial isles of the Pacific--north and south.

"Nay, I fear not for the child, Patiaro, chief of Nukutavau, but yet it
may not be well for her to be taken to the village awhile; for with
thee and thy people doth it rest whether the child and I remain here,
or return to the ship and seek some other island whereon I may build my
house and live in peace. And I will pay thee that which is fair and just
for house and land."

But in those days, before too much civilisation had brought these simple
people deadly disease, Christianity, and the knowledge of the great Pit
of Fire, the brown men thought much of a white man; and so Patiaro, the
chief, made haste to answer:

"Let the child go with my mother, and tell