Stimulated by these considerations, I urged anew my request to Marnoo; but he only set forth in stronger colours the impossibility of my escape, and repeated his previous declaration that the Typees would never be brought to consent to my departure.
When I endeavoured to learn from him the motives which prompted them to hold me a prisoner, Marnoo again presumed that mysterious tone which had tormented me with apprehension when I had questioned him with regard to the fate of my companion.
Thus repulsed, in a manner which only served, by arousing the most dreadful forebodings, to excite me to renewed attempts, I conjured him to intercede for me with the natives, and endeavour to procure their consent to my leaving them.

To this he appeared strongly averse; but, yielding at last to my importunities, he addressed several of the chiefs, who with the rest had been eyeing us intently during the whole of our conversation.

His petition, however, was at once met with the most violent disapprobation, manifesting itself in angry glances and gestures, and a perfect torrent of passionate words, directed to both him and myself.

Marnoo, evidently repenting the step he had taken, earnestly deprecated the resentment of the crowd, and, in a few moments succeeded in pacifying to some extent the clamours which had broken out as soon as his proposition had been understood.
With the most intense interest had I watched the reception his intercession might receive; and a bitter pang shot through my heart at the additional evidence, now furnished, of the unchangeable determination of the islanders.

Marnoo told me with evident alarm in his countenance, that although admitted into the bay on a friendly footing with its inhabitants, he could not presume to meddle with their concerns, as such procedure, if persisted in, would at once absolve the Typees from the restraints of the 'taboo', although so long as he refrained from such conduct, it screened him effectually from the consequences of the enmity they bore his tribe.