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Institute, 1884. According to Taplin, Nurrumdere was a deified black fellow, who died on earth. This is not the case of Baiame, but is said, rather vaguely, to be true of Daramulun.
We can get away from there in one of the Dutch firm's vessels." "I am very sorry, Taplin " I began, when old Captain Warren burst in with "Look here, Taplin, we haven't got much time to talk. Take my advice. Don't go away in the ALIDA." And then he looked at Nerida, and whispered something. A red spark shone in Taplin's dark eyes, then he pressed Warren's hand.
I saw the schooner at daylight, and knew it was the ALIDA." "Where do you think of going to, Taplin?" I asked. "Back to the Carolines. Nerida belongs down that way, you know; and she is fretting to get back again otherwise I wouldn't leave this island. I've done pretty well here, although the people I trade for are well, you know what they are."
He was a fine-looking man, with blue eyes and an unusually fair skin for an island supercargo, with a long, drooping, yellow moustache. Riedermann, the skipper, who followed, was stout, coarse, red-faced, and brutal. "How are you, gentlemen?" said Motley affably, turning from Taplin and his wife, and advancing towards us.
"Taplin," I said, "would you care about taking one of our stations to the eastward? Name any island you fancy, and we will land you there with the pick of our 'trade' room." "Thank you. I would be only too glad, but I cannot. I have promised Nerida to go back to Babelthouap, or somewhere in the Pelews, and Motley has promised to land us at Ponape, in the Carolines.
With wondering, timid eyes, she came, and for a moment or two looked doubtingly upwards into the brown, handsome face of the skipper, and then nestled beside him. For a minute or so the ticking of the cabin clock broke the silence, ere I ventured to ask the one question uppermost in my mind. "Nerida, how and where did Taplin die?"
If you had fired at me I would have booted you from one end of Funafuti beach to the other and I've a damned good mind to do it now, but won't, as Taplin has to do some business with you." "That will do, Warren," I said. "We don't want to make a scene in Taplin's house. Let us go away and allow him to finish his business."
Her skipper came on board the brig, and we started talking of Taplin, whom the whale-ship captain knew. "Didn't you hear?" he said. "The ALIDA never showed up again. 'Turned turtle, I suppose, somewhere in the islands, like all those slashing, over-masted, 'Frisco-built schooners do, sooner or later." "Poor Taplin," said Warren, "I thought somehow we would never see him again."
She looks thirty now, and her face is thin and drawn but I don't say all for love of Taplin." "That will all wear off by and by," said the skipper confidently. "Yes," I thought, "and she won't be a widow long." Next morning Nerida had an hour or two among the prints and muslin in the trade-room, and there was something of the old beauty about her when she sat down to breakfast with us.
"I thank thee many, many times, O friend of my sons. Four children of mine here live in this village, yet not a one of them ever asketh me when I last smoked. May God walk with thee always for this stick of tobacco." Three years ago, in an Australian paper, I read something that set me thinking of Taplin of Taplin and his wife, and the fate of the ALIDA. This is what I read:
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