d horrible they should kill one another; and it
made me sicker still to watch the wounded carried into the Mission and
stretched out in rows on the blood-stained boards. Though not a drinking
man, I braced up at Peter's bar and then went on to pass the time of day
with Oppenstedt.

I found him, as usual, on the mats of the native house, glumly smoking a
pipe and talking politics with Papalangi Mativa. His lean, dark,
handsome face was overcast, his eyes uneasy, and had I not known him for
a brave man I should have thought that he was frightened. He was
certainly very curt and short in greeting me, and I had a dim perception
that my visit was unwelcome.

"This is a black business, Silver Tongue," I said; though, to be exact,
I called him Leoalio, which means the same thing in native.

"Plack!" he exclaimed. "It's horrible! It's disgusting! They have been
cutting off beople's heads!"

"Fourteen by one count," I said; "twenty-two by another."

"Gabtain," said he with a look of extraordinary gravity, "dere's worse
nor that!"

"Worse?" I said.

"I have it straight from Papalangi Mativa himself."

"Have what?" I asked.

"Excellency," said Papalangi Mativa, "perhaps it is not high-chief-known
to thee that I and mine come from a noble Savai'i stock, and that the
son of my mother's sister, a stripling named O, numbered himself among
the enemy and was to-day killed and his head taken on the field of
Vaitele."

[Illustration: "'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said."]

"_Aue!_" I said, which in Kanaka is being sympathetic.

"Dat is not all," said Silver Tongue. "Listen, gabtain!"

"I'm listening," I said.

"The warrior that killed O was To'oto'o, the _matai_," continued
Papalangi Mativa with the air of one announcing the end of the world.

"To'oto'o!" I said in all innocence.

"To'oto'o," cried Silver Tongue; "why, Rosalie's uncle, the _faipule_,
in whose house this very minute the head of my murdered relation lies!"

"'Pon my soul," I exclaimed, "this is really unfortunate!"

"Unfordunate!" cried Silver Tongue; "is it with such a word you describe
two hearts broken, two lives plasted, the fairest prospect with suddenly
crash the curdain led down!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "It's disagreeable, I
admit, but I can't see what difference it can make to you and Rosalie."

"An Oppenstedt," said Silver Tongue, "could never indermarry with the
family of a murderer, and least of