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This was true, and the supercargo, though he knew the awful risk the men ran, and urged them to jump in and paddle, yet knew that the additional weight of two such heavy men as Rfdan and Pulu meant death to all, for every now and then a leaping sea would again fill the boat to the thwarts.
So early next morning Rfdan was put in a boat with many other new 'boys, and he smiled with joy, thinking he was going back to the ship and Onêata. But when the boat sailed round Mulinu's Point, and the spars of the Iserbrook were suddenly hidden by the intervening line of palm trees, a cry of terror burst from him, and he sprang overboard.
At dusk they ran the boat along the plantation jetty, and Pulu and another man led Rfdan up the path to the manager's house. His hands were free, but a stout rope of cinnet was tied around his naked waist and Pulu held the end. 'Ah, you dumb, sulky devil; you've come back to us again, have you? said Burton, eyeing him savagely.
'Get in, Pulu, get in, said Rfdan to the Samoan, in English; 'get in quickly. But Pulu refused. He was a bigger and a heavier man than Rfdan, he said, and the boat was not yet able to bear the weight of a fourth man.
Von Hammer looked at Rídan intently for a minute, and then said one or two words to him in a tongue that the overseer had never before heard. With trembling limbs and a joyful wonder shining in his dark eyes, Rfdan crept up to the supercargo, and then, in a voice of whispered sobs, he told his two years' tale of bitter misery.
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