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With the traders I fared even worse, for the discreditable reports about me had become so well established that I was exposed by them to constant jokes and innuendoes, as well as to a friendliness that was more distasteful than the missionary’s pronounced ill will. It was spread about the beach, and carried thence, I suppose, to every corner of the group, that Bo was a half-white of exquisite beauty, for whose possession I had paid her husband a sum to stagger the imagination, and that, unable to repel my loathsome embraces, she was now taking refuge in a premature death.

I doubt whether there was in the wide Pacific a man so depressed, so absolutely crushed and miserable, as I was during the course of those terrible days on Yap. Had it not been for the shame of the thing, I believe I would have sailed away on the first ship that offered, whatever the port to which she was bound, and would have quitted my unhappy prisoner at any hazard. But, to do me justice, I was incapable of treating any woman so badly, particularly such a sick and helpless creature as Bo was fast becoming. I had now begun, besides, to suspect another name for her complaint, and to see before me a situation more ambiguous and mortifying than any of which I had dreamed. My household was threatened with the advent of another member!