At once it struck me that, could I but reach that valley under his
protection, I might easily from thence reach Nukuheva by water; and,
animated by the prospect which this plan held out, I disclosed it in a
few brief words to the stranger, and asked him how it could be best
accomplished. My heart sunk within me when, in his broken English, he
answered me that it could never be effected. “Kannaka no let you go
nowhere,” he said, “you taboo. Why you no like to stay? Plenty
moee-moee (sleep)—plenty ki-ki (eat)—plenty whihenee (young girls). Oh,
very good place, Typee! Suppose you no like this bay, why you come? You
no hear about Typee? All white men afraid Typee, so no white men come.”
These words distressed me beyond belief; and when I again related to
him the circumstances under which I had descended into the valley and
sought to enlist his sympathies in my behalf, by appealing to the
bodily misery I endured, he listened to me with impatience, and cut me
short by exclaiming, passionately, “Me no hear you talk any more; by by
Kannaka get mad, kill you and me too. No, you see he no want you to
speak to me at all?—you see—ah! by by you no mind—you get well, he kill
you, eat you, hang you head up there, like Happar Kannaka. Now you
listen—but no talk any more. By by I go;—you see way I go. Ah! then
some night Kannaka all moee-moee (sleep)—you run away—you come
Pueearka. I speak Pueearka Kannaka—he no harm you—ah! then I take you
my canoe Nukuheva, and you no run away ship no more.” With these words,
enforced by a vehemence of gesture I cannot describe, Marnoo started
from my side, and immediately engaged in conversation with some of the
chiefs who had entered the house.
It would have been idle for me to have attempted resuming the interview
so peremptorily terminated by Marnoo, who was evidently little disposed
to compromise his own safety by any rash endeavours to ensure mine. But
the plan he had suggested struck me as one which might possibly be
accomplished, and I resolved to act upon it as speedily as possible.
Accordingly, when he arose to depart, I accompanied him, with the
natives, outside of the house, with a view of carefully noting the path
he would take in leaving the valley. Just before leaping from the
pi-pi, he clasped my hand, and, looking significantly at me, exclaimed,
“Now you see you do what I tell you—ah! then you do good;—you no do
so—ah! then you die.” The next moment he waved his spear in adieu to
the islanders, and, following the route that conducted to a defile in
the mountains lying opposite the Happar side, was soon out of sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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