Now, notwithstanding what Jimmy had just told him, there presently came up to my comrade an old woman, who seated herself beside him on the canoe.
‘Typee motarkee?’ said she. ‘Motarkee nuee,’ said Toby.
She then asked him whether he was going to Nukuheva; he nodded yes; and with a plaintive wail and her eyes filling with tears she rose and left him.
This old woman, the sailor afterwards said, was the wife of an aged king of a small island valley, communicating by a deep pass with the country of the Typees. The inmates of the two valleys were related to each other by blood, and were known by the same name. The old woman had gone down into the Typee valley the day before, and was now with three chiefs, her sons, on a visit to her kinsmen.
As the old king’s wife left him, Jimmy again came
