But he met my gaze like a man.

While Annatoo, standing by, looked so expressively the Amazonian character imputed to her, that my doubts began to waver.

And recalling all the little incidents of their story, so hard to be conjured up on the spur of a presumed necessity to lie; nay, so hard to be conjured up at all; my suspicions at last gave way.

And I could no longer harbor any misgivings.
For, to be downright, what object could Samoa have, in fabricating such a narrative of horrors--those of the massacre, I mean--unless to conceal some tragedy, still more atrocious, in which he himself had been criminally concerned?
A supposition, which, for obvious reasons, seemed out of the question.

True, instances were known to me of half- civilized beings, like Samoa, forming part of the crews of ships in these seas, rising suddenly upon their white ship-mates, and murdering them, for the sake of wrecking the ship on the shore of some island near by, and plundering her hull, when stranded.
But had this been purposed with regard to the Parki, where the rest of the mutineers?
There was no end to my conjectures; the more I indulged in them, the more they multiplied.