"Who were they, Pâkía, and how came they to fight?"

"One was a trader, whose name was Preston; he lived on the mainland of
Ponapé, where he had a great house and oil store and many servants. The
name of the other man was Frank. They fought because of a woman."

"Tell me the story, Pâkía. Thou hast seen many lands and many strange
things. And when ye come and sit and talk to me the dulness goeth away
from me and I no longer think of the ship; for of all the people on this
_motu_, to thee and Temana my servant alone do I talk freely. And Temana
is now at church."

The old man chuckled. "Aye, he is at church because Malepa, his wife, is
so jealous of him that she fears to leave him alone. Better would it
please him to be sitting here with us."

I drew the mat curtain across the sitting-room window so that we could
not be seen by prying eyes, and put two cups, a gourd of water, and some
brandy on the table. Except my own man, Temana, the rest of the natives
were intensely jealous of the poor old ex-sailor and wanderer in many
lands, and they very much resented his frequent visits to me--partly on
account of the occasional glass of grog which I gave him, and partly
because he was suspected of still being a _tagata po-uriuri, i.e._, a
heathen. This, however, he vigorously denied, and though Maréko, the
Samoan teacher, was a kind-hearted and tolerant man for a native
minister, the deacons delighted in persecuting and harassing the ancient
upon every possible opportunity, and upon one pretext or another had
succeeded in robbing him of his land and dividing it among his
relatives; so that now in his extreme old age he was dependent upon one
of his daughters, a woman who herself must have been past sixty.