Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/90

24 During the time the ship remained at this place, the officers were very well received and entertained at the governor's house. He was a very gentlemanly old man, kept a good table, and was happy to see his friends. He had an only daughter, a very agreeable girl, of about sixteen, who had just come from a nunnery, where she had received her education. She was greatly concerned at hearing of the depredations committed by the Port au Prince, particularly at Hilo, where the church was plundered of its consecrated vessels. The attack which had been meditated upon the nunnery to the southward of Calao shocked her extremely; she lifted up her hands and eyes, uttered some expressions in Spanish, and laboured for a little time under considerable agitation. She expressed, in tolerably good English, her sentiments upon these subjects, in particular to young Mariner, then about fourteen years of age, and told him she was quite certain his ship would never again reach England, Among other things she asked him if he had had any hand in robbing the church at Hilo ; to which, when he replied jocosely that he only knocked down as many images as he could reach, she predicted that he would never again see his father and mother, and that the ship and all the crew would certainly be destroyed, as a just judgment from