United States or Marshall Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Half-way between the white men's houses was the unfinished church, and near to that the teacher's house, embowered in a grove of orange and lemon trees. As Packenham walked along he looked up the road, smiled and nodded at the Deasy and Schweicker crowd, then deliberately turned to the left and walked into the teacher's dwelling!
Freeing himself from the grasp of the minister's daughter, who at once leapt at Manogi, Packenham seized Schweicker by the collar, and was dragging him away from Deasy when he got a crack on the side of his head from Manogi's mother, who thought he meant to kill her son-in-law, and had dashed to the rescue with a heavy tappa mallet.
And Manogi and all the Deasy women saw Miriamu, the teacher's daughter, come to the open window and make a face at them in derision. Peter and Schweicker looked at each other in speechless indignation. "The swape av the wurruld!" and Deasy dashed his pipe down at his feet and smashed it in small pieces, "to go to a native's house first an' white min sthandin' awaitin' his pleasure.
The doctor of the man-of-war had gone ashore to patch up the wounded, and Denison had been telling the commander how the affair occurred. Now Captain De Groen was wrong. Both Deasy and Schweicker were as decent a pair of men as could be found in the Pacific that is to say, they did no harm to a living soul except themselves when under the influence of liquor, which was not infrequent.
Schweicker who had no children, and was accounted the prettiest woman in Samoa, was clothed, like her husband, in spotless white, and her shining black tresses fell in a wavy mantle down to her waist. Unlike Pati-lima's daughters, whose heads were encircled by wreaths of orange blossoms, Manogi wore neither ornament nor decoration.
So Packenham went ashore, leaving Denison to open out his wares in the brig's trade room in readiness for the two white men. Now both Peter Deasy and Hans Schweicker were feeling very sulky as Denison imagined and at that moment were talking to each other across the road from their respective doorways, for their houses were not far apart.
Schweicker each had a large native following who all considered their white man was the better of the two, the question of commercial supremacy between Peter Deasy and Hans Schweicker was one of much local importance.
Word Of The Day