He had not been there a second, however, when two old women came in, and, approaching him, began to scan him with critical eyes.

This was too much, so Fred thrust the letter into his bosom, darted out, and was instantly surrounded by a band of natives, who began to question him in an unknown tongue.

Seeing that there was no other resource, Fred turned round and fled towards the mountains at a pace that defied pursuit, and, coming to a halt in the midst of a rocky gorge that might have served as an illustration of what chaos was, he sat down behind a big rock to peruse Isobel's letter.
Having read it, he re-read it; having re-read it, he read it over again.
Having read it over again, he meditated a little, exclaiming several times emphatically, "My _darling_ Isobel," and then he read bits of it here and there; having done which, he read the _other_ bits, and so got through it again.

As the letter was a pretty long one, it took him a considerable time to do all this.

Then it suddenly occurred to him that he had been thus selfishly keeping it all to himself instead of sharing it with his father; so he started up and hastened back to the village, where he found Captain Ellice in earnest confabulation with the pastor of the place.