spoke eager, I thought, and that surprised and pleased me.
"Indeed," he went on, "I shouldn't make so sure of getting her,
only she cottoned to the cut of your jib. All you have to do is to
keep dark and let me work the mother my own way; and I'll bring the
girl round to the captain's for the marriage."

I didn't care for the word marriage, and I said so.

"Oh, there's nothing to hurt in the marriage," says he. "Black
Jack's the chaplain."

By this time we had come in view of the house of these three white
men; for a negro is counted a white man, and so is a Chinese! a
strange idea, but common in the islands. It was a board house with
a strip of rickety verandah. The store was to the front, with a
counter, scales, and the poorest possible display of trade: a case
or two of tinned meats; a barrel of hard bread; a few bolts of
cotton stuff, not to be compared with mine; the only thing well
represented being the contraband, firearms and liquor. "If these
are my only rivals," thinks I, "I should do well in Falesa."
Indeed, there was only the one way they could touch me, and that
was with the guns and drink.

In the back room was old Captain Randall, squatting on the floor
native fashion, fat and pale, naked to the waist, grey as a badger,
and his eyes set with drink. His body was covered with grey hair
and crawled over by flies; one was in the corner of his eye - he
never heeded; and the mosquitoes hummed about the man like bees.
Any clean-minded man would have had the creature out at once and
buried him; and to see him, and think he was seventy, and remember