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Whereat the whites would slap her on the back, and it was said they even placed her on their knees and kissed her. Be that true or false, Malamalama grew to hate the sight of a ship; and sometimes, when he and Salesa went on board together, he showed her a sharp knife, and said, "Be careful, you wicked white woman, or I shall kill you."
It is not to be supposed that Malamalama watched with any equanimity this increasing friendship between Professor No No and his wife, or that the constant tale of scandal and evil-doing fell on heedless ears. He beat Salesa repeatedly with a stick, and she bit him in return all over his beautiful body; and their fine house, once the envy of all Uvea, reechoed distressfully with screams and blows.
"But he is overgrown with hair like a dog," said Malamalama, "except on his head, which glistens like a sting ray in the sun, and he is altogether hideous and frightening. It is not reasonable that anyone should prefer him to me." "But there is that in his head which makes him beautiful," said Salesa. "Lo!
And one day he brought not only a new tale, but a bottle of gin he had managed to pilfer from the camp of Professor No No. Malamalama began to drink the gin, and the more he drank the more he began to feel the aching of his spirit. He stopped the passers-by and told them of his wrongs; he rolled over in the road, so that he was all dirty, calling out curses on his wife and Professor No No.
But there is in men a pride about their women that blinds their eyes to sense, and Malamalama, instead of heeding, grew, on the contrary, morose and willful.
Malamalama stopped at the taboo line, not daring to cross it, and withheld, besides, by the notice on the tree; and he was so tipsy with the gin that he could barely shout, nor hold the gun up to his shoulder. But he fired, as straight as he could, in the direction of Professor No No, and shattered a glass barrel of dead fish at his elbow.
He seemed to believe that the taboo gave him protection, for, instead of bolting into the undergrowth, he raced around and around in a circle, and then inside this tent and that, so that it was laughable to watch him popping in and out like a terrified rat. And Malamalama, so overcome with gin that he could barely see, fired and fired and fired from the four boxes of his cartridges.
And Malamalama, who perhaps wanted an anchor for his boat, or a little, tiny, trifling pea-soupo of paint, had perforce to do without either, and paddle ashore again, poorer, indeed, than many of his serfs and dependents. On these occasions also Salesa showed a lawless deportment among the whites that put her good name in jeopardy and caused many to wonder and gossip.
When Malamalama took a new wife, the former wife's family would lie in wait and try to kill him; and other husbands, before exemplary and well conducted, growing restive to see him so successful in his unbridled wickedness, took in their turn the pick of the village maids, propagating hatred and disorder the like of which had never before been known in Uvea.
Malamalama, once a pillar of the church, was degraded from the rank of deacon and expelled, becoming speedily dissolute and abandoned, opening his house for forbidden dances, and taking new wives in shameless succession; and Salesa, her pretty body red with stripes, found no consolation whatever in her white darling, who ran at her repellingly, shouting "No, no!" like a lion; and Billy Hindoo, of whom everyone had tired on account of his light fingers and calumniating tongue, grew increasingly burdensome to his adopted family, and spent most of his time in stoning Professor No No from a safe distance and demanding his wages even to that day, together with a passage at once to the white country.
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