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She fell for the name all right, but there must have been something phony about the clothes. That's the trouble with this park harness; if I'd wore my 'soup and fish' and my two-gallon hat, I'd have passed for a gentleman sure. I'm strong for those evening togs. I see another one later; a little Maduro colored skirt with a fat nose." "Miss Berry." "I'm glad to meet her.
Packenham made two strides over to Lilo and placed his heavy hand on his shoulder "Sit down, you damned little psalm-singing kanaka hog, or I'll knock your eye out. He shall speak." "Get thee hence, thou shielder of the devil's children," said a young, fat deacon, walking up to the trader and spitting contemptuously at his feet. "We want no such white men as thee among us here in Mâdurô."
"Look into my face, people of Mâdurô, and listen to my words. Long before the missionaries came to this island I lived among ye for three years with my wife Nerida. And is there here one man or one woman who can say that I ever lied to him or her? So this do I say to ye all; and to thee, Lilo, the teacher of the Word of God, that ye do wrong to persecute this old man and this child.
And they wanted him to cease giving them food or shelter then when the "Katolikos" found themselves starving they would be glad to give up the "evil" religion which they had learnt in Tahiti. Then would they be baptized and food given them by the people of Mâdurô. Macpherson tried to reason with Lilo. But neither he nor the white-shirted, but trouserless, deacons would listen to him.
But few white men spent an evening in his house if they could help it. One reason of this was that whenever a ship touched at Mâdurô, the Hawaiian native teacher, Lilo, always haunted Mac-pherson's house, and every trader and trading skipper detested this teacher above all others.
"Will he, the damned little sweep?" muttered the supercargo to Packenham; "tell him that we can talk Mâdurô as well as he can and better." So, much to the teacher's disgust, Packenham answered in the Mâdurô dialect. "'Twas better," he said, "that they should all talk Mâdurô." Lilo smiled unpleasantly, and said, "Very well." Then Packenham, turning to the people, spoke to the point.
Six months before, a German trading vessel had called at Mâdurô, and landed an old man of seventy and his grand-daughter a little girl of ten years of age. To the astonishment of the people the old man proved to be a native of the island. His name was Rimé. He had left Mâdurô forty years before for Tahiti as a seaman.
"You ran you colorado maduro good-for-nothing left me stuck in ditch let bushwhacker get away fix you for this, Pablo." Pablo's eyes popped in ecstasy. He grinned like a gargoyle. "You hear those boy, señor?" he reiterated happily. "I tell you those boy he like ol' Pablo.
He was not an American Christian anyway, they said, and had no business to come back to Mâdurô. "And," said Macpherson, "I'll no suffer this the poor creature an' the wee lit child canna git a bit to eat but what I gie them. And because I do gie them something to eat Lilo has turned against me, an' says I'm no a Christian. So I want ye to come ashore and reason wi' the man.
And so the one French priest on Marutea blessed him and the child for Rimé had become a Catholic during his stay in the big plantation and said that God would be good to them both in their long journey across the wide Pacific to far-off Mâdurô. But changes had come to Mâdurô in forty years.
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