- end_line
- 6486
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.152Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6453
- text
- Several weeks previous to our arrival at the island, someone’s husband
and another person’s wife, having taken a mutual fancy for each other,
went out for a walk. The alarm was raised, and with hue and cry they
were pursued; but nothing was seen of them again until the lapse of
some ninety days; when we were called out from the Calabooza to behold
a great mob inclosing the lovers, and escorting them for trial to the
village.
Their appearance was most singular. The girdle excepted, they were
quite naked; their hair was long, burned yellow at the ends, and
entangled with burrs; and their bodies scratched and scarred in all
directions. It seems that, acting upon the “love in a cottage”
principle, they had gone right into the interior; and throwing up a hut
in an uninhabited valley, had lived there, until in an unlucky stroll
they were observed and captured.
They were subsequently condemned to make one hundred fathoms of Broom
Road—a six months’ work, if not more.
Often, when seated in a house, conversing quietly with its inmates, I
have known them betray the greatest confusion at the sudden
announcement of a kannakipper’s being in sight. To be reported by one
of these officials as a “Tootai Owree” (in general, signifying a bad
person or disbeliever in Christianity), is as much dreaded as the
forefinger of Titus Gates was, levelled at an alleged papist.
But the islanders take a sly revenge upon them. Upon entering a
dwelling, the kannakippers oftentimes volunteer a pharisaical
prayer-meeting: hence, they go in secret by the name of “Boora-Artuas,”
literally, “Pray-to-Gods.”
- title
- Chunk 3