"Well, Doctor, you kinder wonder I forgot Hetty Buel. I didn't forget her, but I knew she wa'n't to be had anyhow; I thought I was in for life; and Wailua was the prettiest little craft that ever you set eyes on, as straight as a spar, and as kindly as a Christian; and besides, I had to, or I'd have been killed, and broiled, and eaten, whether or no! And then in that 'are latitude it a'n't just the way 'tis here; you don't work; you get easy, and lazy, and sleepy; somethin' in the air kind of hushes you up; it makes you sweat to think, and you're too hazy to, if it didn't; and you don't care for nothing much but food and drink. I hadn't no spunk left; so I married her after their fashion, and I liked her well enough; and she was my wife, after all. "I tell ye, Doctor, it goes a gret way with men-folks to think anything's their'n, and nobody else's. But when I married her, I took the chain with Hetty Buel's ring off my neck, and put 'em in a shell, and buried the shell under my doorway. I couldn't have Wailua touch that. "So there I lived fifteen long year, as it might be, in a kind of a curus dream, doin' nothin' much, only that when I got to know the tongue them savages spoke, little by little I got pretty much the steerin' o' the hull crew, till by-'n'-by some of 'em got jealous, and plotted and planned to kill me, because the king, Wailua's father, was gettin' old, and they thought I wanted to be king when he died, and they couldn't stan' that no way. "Somehow or other Wailua got word of what was goin' on, and one night she woke me out of sleep an' told me I must run for't, and she would hide me safe till things took a turn. So I scratched up the shell with Hetty's ring in't, and afore morning I was over t'other side of the island, in a kind of a cave overlookin' the sea, near by to a grove of bananas and mammee apples, and not fur from the harbor where I'd landed; and safe enough, for nobody but Wailua knew the way to't.