Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/282

 kissing the homely cheeks with more than imperial fervour, so I knew all was well thus far, and stopped expectorating at the little fishes in the water below and went over to them. It was time! We had hardly spoken together a minute when a couple of war-canoes filled with men appeared round the nearest promontory, coming down the swift water with arrow-like rapidity.

"Quick!" said the fishwife, "or we are all lost. Into your canoe and paddle up this creek. It runs out to the sea behind the town, and at the bar is my man's fishing-boat amongst many others. Lie hidden there till he comes if you value your lives." So in we got, and while that good Samaritan went back to her house we cautiously paddled through a deserted backwater to where it presently turned through low sandbanks to the gulf. There were the boats, and we hid the canoe and lay down amongst them till, soon after, a man, easily recognised as the husband of our friend, came sauntering down from the village.

At first he was sullen, not unreasonably alarmed at the danger into which his good woman was running him. But when he set eyes on Heru he softened immediately. Probably that thick-bodied fellow had never seen so much female loveliness in so small a bulk in all his life, and, being a man, he surrendered at discretion.