"Hoots, lassie, scat 'em!--scat 'em!" he broke out. "They nip like the de'il himsel'. It's the kiss of a cold Scotch mist I'm wantin'."
The dusky bride greeted the newcomers with a smile broad enough to typify her happiness and victory. She had proved herself stronger than the white men, and was satisfied with her prize. She had woven a garland of crimson hibiscus into her dark hair and another round her neck, and with her lustrous eyes and gleaming smile she made a very pretty picture. In a playful mood she had also inserted a crimson flower behind each ear of her captive, and when, at her warning word, he sat up suddenly, he looked supremely silly and was aware of it.
"So you've made your choice, Lean?" said Blair quietly.
And Sandy glowered back at him with defiant confusion, while the flies settled on his shoulders.
"You're the first to fall away from us," said Blair, "and it would have been better, I think, if you had waited. However, as you have decided, so it must be. You have no wife at home?"
"Very well. Stand up before me with the girl and take her hand."
They stood up in their surprise, and he read the marriage service over them, insisting on Sandy's responses and taking the girl's for granted, since there was no possible doubt about her wishes.
"Now," he said, when it was over, "she is your wife, and you are at liberty to return to the village. Ha'o will see you married again there according to the island custom, so that the people may understand that you really are married. You have taken yourself off the ship's books, of course, and you will have to support yourself and your wife. I hope you will treat her well. No doubt her relatives will see to it if you do not. It would, I think, be as well for you to keep in touch with the mission, and we will do what we can to help you. You can have tools and seeds. If you get into any trouble, come to me. Now goodbye--and--see you treat that girl well." And they left the newly-married couple to their honeymooning.
It was some days before Mr. and Mrs. Sandy descended from the clouds to the humdrum cares of life. Ha'o punctiliously performed over them all the rites and ceremonies observable in marriage on Kapaa'a, and before they were ended the bridegroom began to weary of all the fuss and to long for the easier accommodations of civilised life.