Читать книгу Men Against the Sea – Book Set. The Greatest Maritime Adventure Novels: The Bounty Trilogy, Lost Island, The Hurricane, Botany Bay, The Far Lands, Tales of the South Seas… онлайн

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“What do you mean?”

“What I say!” Prudence laughed softly. “You keep him! A black-haired loose woman like you!”

She was of the ehu, or fair Maoris, and her words stung Hutia to the quick. “Red dog!”

“Sow!”

Hutia sprang on the smaller girl fiercely, seized her by the hair, and after a short tussle succeeded in throwing her down in the pool. There, astride of her enemy’s back and with hands buried in her hair, she held her under water, jerking at her head savagely till the younger girl was half drowned. At last she was satisfied. She stood up, turned her back scornfully, and began to bathe.

Prudence rose from the pool, donned her kilt and mantle with trembling hands, took up her calabash, and disappeared into the bush. Stopping to compose herself and to arrange her hair before she reached the settlement, she went straight to the cookhouse where she knew that Fasto would be at work.

“There is something I must tell you,” she said to the elder woman, who sat on a little three-legged stool as she grated a coconut for her fowls. “You have been kind to me. I am young and you have been like a mother. Now I must tell you, before the others begin to mock.”