Old Samoan Days. 
1 77 
to be messenger, the chief’s daughter, Vaitupu, 
a charming girl of fourteen, accompanied by a 
younger brother, ran up and embraced me with 
the greatest demonstrations of joy, for I was 
once an old comrade of theirs in days gone by 
in many a fishing trip and forest ramble along 
the shores of both Upolu and Savaii—the two 
principal islands of the group. And then, having 
sent off a message to Gafalua and written a note 
on the leaf of my pocket-book to the doctor of 
the warship, I resigned myself to the never- 
ending attentions of my native friends. By 
and by, after I had eaten some baked fish and 
drank a young coconut, the whole of the elder 
women in the village entered the house, and 
seating themselves in a semicircle before me, 
plied me with questions as to where I had been 
all these long, long moons. Had I seen the 
black people of the Solomon Islands—they who 
ate men ? Was it true, the tale they had heard 
of a trading ship coming from America to sell 
the people repeating rifles on long credit ? Had 
I seen the great circus in Nui Silani (New 
Zealand) of which Pili had told them—a circus 
in which one man jumped over four-and-twenty 
horses ? Or was Pili only a liar ? 
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