By Reef and Palm, page 87 by Louis Becke
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real sad story, gentlemen, and if I should ever run across Doctor Francis, I should talk some to him. But see here. Here is my log; my mate, who is a fancy writist, wrote it at my dictation. I can't show you the letter that the pore creature herself wrote; that I ain't going to show to any one."
The two captains rose and stood beside him, and read the entry in the log of the POCAHONTAS.
"November 28, 187-.
This day I landed at Easter Island, to try and obtain as a 'green' hand a young Chilian seaman who, the captain of the Chilian corvette O'HIGGINS informed me, had run away there. On landing I was shown the body of a young girl, whom the natives stated to be the deserter. She had died that morning. Buried her as decently as circumstances would permit. From a letter she wrote on the morning of her death I learned her name to be Senora Teresa T----. Her husband, Dr Francis T----, was an Englishman in the service of the Chilian Republic. He was sent out on a scientific mission to the island, and his wife followed him in the O'HIGGINS disguised as a blue-jacket. I should take her to have been about nineteen years of age.
"SPENCE ELDRIDGE, MASTER. "MANUAL LEGASPE, 2ND OFFICER. "Brig POCAHONTAS, of Martha's Vineyard, U.S.A."
"Well, that's curious now," said the skipper of the NASSAU; "why, I knew that man. He left the island in the KING DARIUS, of New Bedford, and landed at Ponape in the Caroline Group, whar those underground ruins are at Metalanien Harbour. Guess he wanted to potter around there a bit. But he got inter some sorter trouble among the natives there, an' he got shot."
"Aye," said the captain of the DAGGET, "I remember the affair. I was mate of the JOSEPHINE, and we were lying at Jakoits Harbour when he was killed, and now I remember the name too. Waal, he wasn't much account, anyhow."
* * * * *
Ten years ago a wandering white man stood, with Taku the Sailor, at the base of the wall of the great PAPAKU, and the native pointed out the last re