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By Reef and Palm by Louis Becke
page 77 of 155 (49%)
Islands. He had landed there one day from a Sydney sperm whaler with a
chest of clothes, a musket or two, and a tierce of twist tobacco; with
him came a savage-eyed, fierce-looking native wife, over whose bared
shoulders and bosom fell long waves of black hair; with her was a child
about five years old.

The second mate of the whaler, who was in charge of the boat, not
liking the looks of the excited natives who swarmed around the
newcomer, bade him a hurried farewell, and pushed away to the ship,
which lay-to off the passage with her fore-yard aback. Then the
clamorous people pressed more closely around Probyn and his wife, and
assailed them with questions.

So far neither of them had spoken. Probyn, a tall, wiry, scanty-haired
man, with quiet, deep-set eyes, was standing with one foot on the
tierce of tobacco and his hands in his pockets. His wife glared
defiantly at some two or three score of reddish-brown women who crowded
eagerly around her to stare into her face; holding to the sleeve of her
dress was the child, paralysed into the silence of fright.


* * * * *


The deafening babble and frantic gesticulations were perfectly
explicable to Probyn, and he apprehended no danger. The head man of the
village had not yet appeared, and until he came this wild license of
behaviour would continue. At last the natives became silent and parted
to the right and left as Tahori, the head man, his fat body shining
with coconut oil, and carrying an ebony-wood club in his hand, stood in
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