he started to hurry back into the valley. But hardly was his back turned,
when a dozen hands were laid on him, and he learned that he could not go a
step farther.

It was in vain that he fought with them: they would not hear of his
stirring from the beach. Cut to the heart at this unexpected repulse, Toby
now conjured the sailor to go after me alone. But Jimmy replied, that in
the mood the Typees then were, they would not permit him to do so, though,
at the same time, he was not afraid of their offering him any harm.

Little did Toby then think, as he afterwards had good reason to suspect,
that this very Jimmy was a heartless villain, who, by his arts, had just
incited the natives to restrain him, as he was in the act of going after
me. Well must the old sailor have known, too, that the natives would never
consent to our leaving together; and he therefore wanted to get Toby off
alone, for a purpose which he afterwards made plain. Of all this, however,
my comrade now knew nothing.

He was still struggling with the islanders, when Jimmy again came up to
him, and warned him against irritating them, saying that he was only
making matters worse for both of us, and if they became enraged, there was
no telling what might happen. At last he made Toby sit down on a broken
canoe, by a pile of stones, upon which was a ruinous little shrine,
supported by four upright paddles, and in front partly screened by a net.
The fishing parties met there, when they came in from the sea, for their
offerings were laid before an image, upon a smooth black stone within.
This spot, Jimmy said, was strictly "taboo," and no one would molest or
come near him while he stayed by its shadow. The old sailor then went off,
and began speaking very earnestly to Mow-Mow and some other chiefs, while
all the rest formed a circle round the taboo place, looking intently at
Toby, and talking to each other without ceasing.

Now, notwithstanding what Jimmy had just told him, there presently came up
to my comrade an old woman, who seated herself beside him on the canoe.

"Typee Mortarkee?" said she. "Mortarkee muee," said Toby.

She then asked whether he was going to Nukuheva; he nodded yes; and with a
plaintive wail, her eyes filling with tears, she rose and left him.

This old woman, the sailor afterwards said, was the wife of an aged king
of a small inland valley, communicating by a deep pass with the country of
the Typees. The inmates of the two valleys w