to my departure.

When I endeavoured to learn from him the motives which prompted them to
hold me a prisoner, Marnoo again assumed that mysterious tone which had
tormented me with apprehensions when I had questioned him with regard to
the fate of my companion.

Thus repulsed, in a manner which only served, by arousing the most
dreadful forebodings, to excite me to renewed attempts, I conjured him to
intercede for me with the natives, and endeavour to procure their consent
to my leaving them. To this he appeared strongly averse; but, yielding at
last to my importunities, he addressed several of the chiefs, who with the
rest had been eyeing us intently during the whole of our conversation. His
petition, however, was at once met with the most violent disapprobation,
manifesting itself in angry glances and gestures, and a perfect torrent of
passionate words, directed to both him and myself. Marnoo, evidently
repenting the step he had taken, earnestly deprecated the resentment of
the crowd, and in a few moments succeeded in pacifying, to some extent,
the clamours which had broken out as soon as his proposition had been
understood.

With the most intense interest had I watched the reception his
intercession might receive; and a bitter pang shot through my heart at the
additional evidence, now furnished, of the unchangeable determination of
the islanders. Marnoo told me, with evident alarm in his countenance, that
although admitted into the bay on a friendly footing with its inhabitants,
he could not presume to meddle with their concerns, as such a procedure,
if persisted in, would at once absolve the Typees from the restraints of
the "taboo," although so long as he refrained from any such conduct, it
screened him effectually from the consequences of the enmity they bore his
tribe.

At this moment, Mehevi, who was present, angrily interrupted him; and the
words which he uttered, in a commanding tone, evidently meant that he must
at once cease talking to me, and withdraw to the other part of the house.
Marnoo immediately started up, hurriedly enjoining me not to address him
again, and, as I valued my safety, to refrain from all further allusion to
the subject of my departure; and then, in compliance with the order of the
determined chief, but not before it had again been angrily repeated, he
withdrew to a distance.

I now perceived, with no small degree of apprehension, the same savage
expression in the countenances of th