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The next day he called in state, with the skull of a shark in a silk handkerchief, and a man carrying a crate of onions. Oh, it may sound common to you, but it’s like sending flowers to your lady-love in Puna Punou, and I’ve seen a year pass without the sight of one! I guess he walked in on velvet, and it is certain he stayed nigh two hours, for I timed him myself from the deck of the Ransom –the beach being a great place to take notice, as I have said already–and what was our feelings when next Sunday the captain marched into church–yes, sir–in crisp new panjammers and a polkadot neckerchief; and I’m blest if John Rau wasn’t there, too, likewise polka-dotted; and that there Chinaman tagging along behind, rigged the same, only with earrings extra, and taking a back seat out of respeck! Afterwards they all went up to the Mission house in a body, Tweedie jumping in with an address, and everybody singing except the Chinaman, who was made to stop!

You mustn’t think for a minute that we traders knew the missionary or that he knew us, or that the beach took any part in this except at a distance. There’s no love lost between missionaries and traders. That’s what made it so strange to see Captain Coe going the way he did, and taking up with all that nigger-loving and “Johnny, how’s your soul?” We could only see one reason, and that was Alethea Tweedie; and the betting was about even whether he’d pull it off or not. But if we didn’t talk to the Tweedies, I guess there was mighty little that went on there we didn’t know of–whether it was turtle steak for breakfast, or the tiff they had about her wearing too gauzy a dress at the party Coe gave aboard the Peep o’ Day.

He did it up in style, with bunting and Chinese lanterns and the king, and afterwards there was fireworks. Oh, my, yes! a regular blow-out, with the crew in new jumpers and two boatloads of flowers and moso’oi ! We all asked one another where it was going to end, what with the picnic next day, and him always at the Mission house. But we might have saved our breath, as far as any scandal was concerned, for, instead of up stick and away, with the lady locked in his cabin, like some of the beach had fondly hoped, what did Coe do but turn missionary himself! Got religion, by God! till you couldn’t have known him for the same master mariner; while John Rau and Lum, not to be behindhand neither, cavorted into the holy swim with a whoop and a bang! The captain went off terrific–like everything he did–making Billy Jones’s cousin marry his wife, and Peter Extrum marry his ; and there was more half-caste baptizing and squealing and certificating than I remember since the tidal wave of Eighty-one!

Coe put it all down to conviction and a change of heart, but anybody could see it was Alethea Tweedie who was his religion. When he prayed, which he used to do tremendous, it was all the time to Mrs. Tweedie; and when he said the kingdom of heaven, you knew mighty well that to him it was the coral Mission house on the hill. He put her on a pedestal a mile high, and kept her at the top by worshiping so hard at the bottom. I guess she couldn’t have got off without stepping all over him, and was just forced to be a saint whether she wanted to or no. Not but what she was as good as gold, and a pattern for any young white woman to go by, but her eyes always kind of melted when she looked at Coe; which was no wonder, as he stood six feet high and straight as a dart, and every girl in the island was wild about him; and she had an imperious little way of treating him like he was a favorite dog who she was proud to show off being master of. She sent him her canary, which was all she had in the world except her clothes, and wrote a little piece how it would sing to him at sea and soothe his rugged bosom.