she would be my wife. She put her face to my shoulder, and then took
the circlet from her forehead and bound it round my bared arm, and I
gave her a silver ring which I wore on my little finger. Then, together
with the Nanomaga man and his wife, we made our plans.... Ah! she was a
fine girl. For nearly a year was she wife to me until she sickened and
died of the _meisake elo_[8] which was brought to Ponapé by the
missionary ship from Honolulu.

"So the girl and I made our plans, and my friends promised to hide me
when the time came for me to run away. We sat long into the night, and I
heard much of the man called Franka and of the jealousy he bore to
Preston. He was jealous of him because of two reasons; one was that he
possessed such a fine house and so much land and a schooner, and the
other was that the people of Jakoits paid him the same respect as they
paid one of their high chiefs. So that was why Franka hated him. His
heart was full of hatred, and sometimes when he was drunk in his own
house at Ro|an Kiti he would boast to the natives that he would one
day show them that he was a better man than Preston. Sometimes his
drunken boastings were brought to the ears of Preston, who only laughed
and took no heed, and always gave him the good word when they met, which
was but seldom, for Jakoits and Kiti are far apart, and there was bad
blood between the people of the two places. And then--so the girl Sipi
afterwards told me--Franka was a lover of grog and a stealer of women,
and kept a noisy house and made much trouble, and so Preston went not
near him, for he was a quiet man and no drinker, and hated dissension.
And, besides this, Franka took part in the wars of the Kiti people, and
went about with a following of armed men, and such money as he made in
trading he spent in muskets and powder and ball; for all this Preston
had no liking, and one day he said to Franka, 'Be warned, this fighting
and slaying is wrong; it is not correct for a white man to enter into