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He prided himself on two things his knowledge of English and his friendship for white men. He rose to his feet, grasped his rifle, and made for the door. "Here, come back, Tubariga. Perhaps it isn't your fault. Let her stay away. She's no good, anyway." Tubariga came back. "Tell me, white man, do you want your servant to come back?"
Motioning the trader's wife away, Tubariga's savage features relaxed with a pleased smile. "Well, Tubariga, how are you?" said Blackett. "'Rita tell me I damn you too much last night, eh? Never mind, old chap, I was mad about that girl running away. You can tell her people to keep her and the musket too. Rita don't want her any more. Ship come soon, then we go away."
The quickening agonies of fever were fast seizing him, and, entering the house and throwing himself on a seat, he felt his brain whirling, and scarcely noticed that Tubariga, the local chief, was bending over him anxiously. Then 'Rita came with the steaming coffee, and one quick glance at Blackett's crouched-up figure told her that the dreaded fever had seized him at last.
Again the pleased smile spread over the chiefs face. Bending over Blackett he placed his hideous lips, blood-red with the stains of betel-juice, close to his face, and said with the simple pride of a child, "Me pinish him." "What?" said Blackett, with a strange feeling at his heart "What did you do to that girl, Tubariga?"
Blackett under the combined influences of rum, strong coffee, fever, and woman's tears went into a rage, and glared angrily at the chief, Tubariga. "You're a d -d nice fellow," he said in English; "you get my wife to pay a good musket for a girl, and then as soon as I am away you let that girl run back into the bush. You're a bad friend." Tubariga felt hurt.
Sitting down with his rifle across his knees, the chief told the conscience-stricken trader that he had followed the girl to a bush village, where he, Tubariga, as their chief, had demanded her from her parents. They insisted on her going back, but she whimpered and said that the white man's wife would beat her.
"Yes, d you!" answered Blackett, who now again was seized with that hideous brain-whirl that in fever is simple delirium, "bring her back, alive or dead." The chief nodded and went out. Next morning the first fierce violence of the fever had temporarily left him, and Blackett was lying covered up with rugs, when the grim figure of Tubariga entered noiselessly, and stole to his side.
"Harry," she said, "I thought you were more of a man" and here her voice softened "don't grieve over it. It wasn't your fault,... and I have been a good little girl to you. Don't be miserable because of such a little thing as that. If Tubariga hadn't killed her, I daresay I should have done so myself. She was a sulky little wretch." I know Blackett well.
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