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By Reef And Palm, and Other Stories..............................................................................................................1

FOUR years had come and gone since the day that Challis, with a dull and savage misery in his heart, had,

cursing the lovemadness which once possessed him, walked out from his house in an Australian city with an

undefined and vague purpose of going "somewhere" to drown his sense of wrong and erase from his memory

the face of the woman who, his wife of not yet a year, had played with her honour and his. So he thought,

You see, Challis was "a fool" at least so his pretty, violeteyed wife had told him that afternoon with a

bitter and contemptuous ring in her voice when he had brought another man's letter written to her and

with impulsive and jealous haste had asked her to explain. He was a fool, she had said, with an angry gleam

in the violet eyes, to think she could not "take care" of herself. Admit receiving that letter? Of course! Did he

think she could help other men writing silly letters to her? Did he not think she could keep out of a mess?

And she smiled the selfsatisfied smile of a woman conscious of many admirers and of her own powers of

Then Challis, with a big effort, gulping down the rage that stirred him, made his great mistake. He spoke of

his love for her. Fatuity! She laughed at him, said that as she detested women, his love was too exacting for

Challis looked at her steadily for a few moments, trying to smother the wild flood of black suspicion aroused

in him by the discovery of the letter, and confirmed by her sneering words, and then said quietly, but with a

"Remember you are my wife. If you have no regard for your own reputation, you shall have some for

mine. I don't want to entertain my friends by thrashing R, but I'm not such a fool as you think. And if

"No," said Challis grimly, "something damned prosaic common enough among men with pretty wives

Of course she didn't quite mean it. She really liked Challis in her own smallsouled way principally

because his money had given her the social pleasures denied her during her girlhood. With an unmoved face

A quarter of an hour later he arose to go, and the lawyer asked him when he intended returning.

"That all depends upon her. If she wants me back again, she can write, through you, and I'll come if she

has conducted herself with a reasonable amount of propriety for such a pretty woman."

Then, with an ugly look on his face, Challis went out; next day he embarked in the Lady Alicia for a six

That was four years ago, and today Challis, who stands working at a little table set in against an open

window, hammering out a ring from a silver coin on a marlinespike and vyce, whistles softly and

contentedly to himself as he raises his head and glances through the vista of coconuts that surround his

"The devil!" he thinks to himself, "I must be turning into a native. Four years! What an ass I was! And I've

never written yet that is, never sent a letter away. Well, neither has she. Perhaps, after all, there was little

in that affair of R's. . . . By God! though, if there was, I've been very good to them in leaving them a

clear field. Anyhow, she's all right as regards money. I'm glad I've done that. It's a big prop to a man's

conscience to feel he hasn't done anything mean; and she likes money most women do. Of course I'll go

back if she writes. If not well, then, these sinful islands can claim me for their own; that is, Nalia can."

A native boy with shaven head, save for a long tuft on the left side, came down from the village, and, seating

himself on the gravelled space inside the fence, gazed at the white man with full, lustrous eyes.

"Pardon, Tialli. I came to look at thee making the ring. Is it of soft silver and for Nalia, thy wife?"

"Ay, O shavenhead, it is. Here, take this masi and go pluck me a young nut to drink," and Challis threw him

a shipbiscuit. Then he went on tapping the little band of silver. He had already forgotten the violet eyes, and

was thinking with almost childish eagerness of the soft glow in the black orbs of Nalia when she should see

The boy returned with a young coconut, unhusked. "Behold, Tialli. This nut is a uto ga'au (sweet husk).

When thou hast drunk the juice give it me back, that I may chew the husk which is sweet as the sugarcane

Challis drank, then threw him the husk and resumed his work. Presently the boy, tearing off a strip of the

husk with his white teeth, said, "Tialli, how is it that there be no drinkingnuts in thy house?"

"Because, O turtlehead, my wife is away; and there are no men in the village today; and because the

women of this motu I have no thought that the papalagi may be parched with thirst, and so come not near me

"Nay,Tialli. Not so. True it is that today all the men are in the bush binding fala leaves around the coconut

trees, else do the rats steal up and eat the buds and clusters of little nuts. And because Nalia, thy wife, is away

Challis laughed. "O evilminded people of Nukunono! And must I, thy papalagi, be parched with thirst

"Faiaga oe, Tialli, thou but playest with me. Raise thy hand and call out 'I thirst!' and every woman in the

village will run to thee, each with a drinkingnut, and those that desire thee, but are afraid, will give two. But

The white man mused. The boy's solemn chatter entertained him. He knew well the native customs; but, to

"O foolish custom! See how I trust my wife Nalia. Is she not even now in the house of another white man?"

"True. But, then, he is old and feeble, and thou young and strong. None but a fool desires to eat a dried

"O wise man with the shaven crown," said Challis, with mocking good nature, "thou art full of wisdom of the

ways of women. And if I were old and withered, would Nalia then be false to me in a house of another and

"How could she? Would not he, too, have a wife who would watch her? And if he had not, and were nofo noa

(single), would he be such a fool to steal that the like of which he can buy for there are many girls without

husbands as good to look on as that Nalia of thine. And all women are alike," and then, hearing a woman's

"Farewell, O ulu tula poto (Wise Baldhead)," said Challis, as the boy, still chewing his sweet husk,walked

Ere dusk, Nalia came home, a slenderlybuilt girl with big dreamy eyes, and a heavy mantle of wavy hair. A

white muslin gown, fastened at the throat with a small silver brooch, was her only garment, save the folds of

the navyblueandwhite lava lava round her waist, which the Europeanfashioned garment covered.

Challis was lying down when she came in. Two girls who came with her carried baskets of cooked food,

presents from old Jack Kelly, Challis's fellowtrader. At a sign from Nalia the girls took one of the baskets of

food and went away. Then, taking off her widebrimmed hat of fala leaf, she sat down beside Challis and

"Tapa Could I talk to them! I, a white man's wife, must not be too familiar with every girl, else they would

seek to get presents from me with sweet words. Besides, could I carry home the fish and cooked fowl sent

thee by old Tiaki? That would be unbecoming to me, even as it would be if thou climbed a tree for a

coconut," and the daughter of the Tropics laughed merrily as she patted Challis on his sunburnt cheek.

The girl with an eager "Aue!" took the bauble and placed it on her finger. She made a pretty picture, standing

there in the last glow of the sun as it sank into the ocean, her languorous eyes filled with a tender light.

Challis, sitting on the end of the table regarding her with halfamused interest as does a man watching a child

with a toy, suddenly flushed hotly. "By God! I can't be such a fool as to begin to love her in reality, but yet . .

. Come here, Nalia," and he drew her to him, and, turning her face up so that he might look into her eyes, he

"I do but ask thee some little things. It matters not to me what the answer is. Yet see that thou keepest nothing

Challis, still holding her soft brown chin in his hand, asked her one more question a question that only one

"Aye, alofa tumau (everlasting love). Am I a fool? Are there not Letia, and Miriami, and Eline, the daughter

of old Tiaki, ready to come to this house if I love any but thee? Therefore my love is like the suckers of the

A curious feeling of satisfaction possessed the man, and next day Letia, the "show" girl of the village, visiting

Challis's store to buy a tin of salmon, saw Nalia, the Lucky One, seated on a mat beneath the seaward side of

the trader's house, surrounded by a billowy pile of yellow silk, diligently sewing.

"Ho, dear friend of my heart! Is that silken dress for thee? For the love of God, let me but touch it. Four

dollars a fathom it be priced at. Thy husband is indeed the king of generosity. Art thou to become a mother?"

Challis, coming to the corner of the house, leant against a post, and something white showed in his hand. It

was a letter. His letter to the woman of violet eyes, written a week ago, in the halfformed idea of sending it

some day. He read it through, and then paused and looked at Nalia. She raised her head and smiled. Slowly,

piece by piece, he tore it into tiny little squares, and, with a dreamy handwave, threw them away. The wind

held them in midair for a moment, and then carried the little white flecks to the beach.

"Only a piece of paper that weighed as a piece of iron on my bosom. But it is gone now."

"Even so," said Letia, smelling the gaudy label on the tin of salmon in the anticipative ecstasy of a true

Polynesian, "pe se mea fa'agotoimoana (like a thing buried deep in ocean). May God send me a white man as

generous as thee a whole tin of samani for nothing! Now do I know that Nalia will bear thee a son."

WE were in Manton's Hotel at LevukaLevuka in her palmy days. There were Robertson, of the barque

Rolumah; a fat German planter from the Yasawa Group; Harry the Canadian, a trader from the Tokelaus, and

Presently a knock came to the door, and Allan, the boatswain of our brig, stood hat in hand before us. He was

a stalwart halfcaste of Manhiki, and, perhaps, the greatest manaia (Lothario) from Ponape to Fiji.

"Captain say to come aboard, please. He at the Consul's for papers he meet you at boat," and Allan left.

"Ay," said Robertson, the trading skipper, "and a good man with his mauleys, too. He's the champion

knockerout in Samoa, and is a match for any Englishman in Polynesia, let alone foreigners" with a sour

"Well, goodbye all," I said. "I'm sorry, Oppermann, I can't stay for another day for your wedding, but our

The trading captain and Harry walked with me part of the way, and then began the usual Fiji gup.

"Just fancy that fatheaded Dutchman going all the way to Samoa and picking on a young girl and sending

her to the Sisters to get educated properly! As if any old beachgirl isn't good enough for a blessed

"No," I said; "Oppermann showed me her photo. Pretty girl. Says she's been three years with the Sisters in

Samoa, and has got all the virtues of her white father, and none of the vices of her Samoan mammy. Told me

Robertson smiled grimly. "Ay, I don't doubt it. He's been all round Levuka cracking her up. I brought her

here last week, and the Dutchman's been in a chronic state of silly ever since. She's an almighty fine girl.

She's staying with the Sisters here till the marriage. By the Lord, here she is now coming along the street! Bet

a dollar she's been round Vagadace way, where there are some fast Samoan women living. 'Tis in the blood, I

The future possessor of the Oppermann body and estate was a pretty girl. Only those who have seen fair

young Polynesian halfcastes before they get married, and grow coarse, and drink beer, and smoke like a

Our boat was at the wharf, and just as we stood talking Allan sauntered up and asked me for a dollar to get a

bottle of gin. Just then the German's fiancee reached us. Robertson introduced Harry and myself to her, and

then said goodbye. She stood there in the broiling Fijian sun with a dainty sunshade over her face, looking

so lovely and cool in her spotless muslin dress, and withal so innocent, that I no longer wondered at the

Allan the Stalwart stood by waiting for his dollar. The girl laughed joyously when Harry the Canadian said he

would be at the wedding and have a high time, and held out her soft little hand as he bade her adieu and

The moment Harry had gone Allan was a new man. Pulling off his straw hat, he saluted her in Samoan, and

"There are many teine lalelei (beautiful girls) in the world, but there is none so beautiful as thou. Only truth

do I speak, for I have been to all countries of the world. Ask him who is here our supercargo if I lie. O

maid with the teeth of pearl and face like Fetuao (the morning star), my stomach is drying up with the fire of

The sunshade came a little lower, and the fingers played nervously with the ivory handle. I leant against a

"Thy name is Vaega. See that! How do I know? Aha, how do I? Because, for two years or more, whenever I

passed by the stone wall of the Sisters' dwelling in Matafele, I climbed up and watched thee, O Star of the

Morning, and I heard the other girls call thee Vaega. Oho! and some night I meant to steal thee away."

(The rascal! He told me two days afterwards that the only time he ever climbed the Mission wall was to steal

The sunshade was tilted back, and displayed two big, black eyes, luminous with admiring wonder.

"And so thou hast left Samoa to come here to be devoured by this fat hog of a Dutchman! Dost thou not

know, O foolish, lovely one, that she who mates with a Siamani (German) grows old in quite a little time, and

thy face, which is now smooth and fair, will be coarse as the rind of a halfripe breadfruit, because of the

There was a quick clasp of hands as the Stalwart One and the Maid hurriedly spoke again, this time in a

The captain was what he called "no' so dry" viz. halfseas over, and very jolly. He told Allan he could

have an hour to himself to buy what he wanted, and then told me that the captain of a steam collier had

promised to give us a tug out at daylight. "I'm right for the weddingfeast after all," I thought.

But the wedding never came off. That night Oppermann, in a frantic state, was tearing round Levuka hunting

for his love, who had disappeared. At daylight, as the collier steamed ahead and tautened our towline, we

could see the parties of searchers with torches scouring the beach. Our native sailors said they had heard a

scream about ten at night and seen the sharks splashing, and the white liars of Levuka shook their heads and

looked solemn as they told tales of monster sharks with eightfoot jaws always cruising close in to the shore

Three days afterwards Allan came to me with stolid face and asked for a bottle of wine, as Vaega was very

seasick. I gave him the wine, and threatened to tell the captain. He laughed, and said he would fight any

man, captain or no captain, who meddled with him. And, as a matter of fact, he felt safe the skipper

valued him too much to bully him over the mere stealing of a woman. So the limp and seasick Vaega was

carried up out of the sweating foc'sle and given a cabin berth, and Allan planked down two twentydollar

pieces for her passage to the Union Group. When she got better she sang rowdy songs, and laughed all day,

and made fun of the holy Sisters. And one day Allan beat her with a deal board because she sat down on a

bandbox in the traderoom and ruined a hat belonging to a swell official's wife in Apia. And she liked him

The fair Vaega was Mrs Allan for just six months, when his erratic fancy was captivated by the daughter of

Mauga, the chief of Tutuila, and an elopement resulted to the mountains. The subsequent and inevitable

parting made Samoa an undesirable place of residence for Allan, who shipped as boatsteerer in the Niger of

New Bedford. As for Vaega, she drifted back to Apia, and there, right under the shadow of the Mission

Church, she flaunted her beauty. The last time I saw her was in Charley the Russian's saloon, when she

showed me a letter. It was from the bereaved Oppermann, asking her to come back and marry him.

"E pule le Atua (if God so wills), but he only sent me twenty dollars, and that isn't half enough. However,

there's an American manofwar coming next week, and these other girls will see then. I'll make the papalagi

TIKENA the Clubfooted guided me to an open spot in the junglegrowth, and, sitting down on the butt of a

twisted toa, indicated by a sweep of his tattooed arm the lower course of what had once been the White Man's

"Like unto himself was this, his house," he said, puffing a dirty clay pipe, "squarebuilt and strong. And the

walls were of great blocks made of panisina of coral and lime and sand mixed together; and around each

centrepost posts that to lift one took the strength of fifty men was wound two thousand fathoms of

thin plaited cinnet, stained red and black. Apa! he was a great man here in these motu (islands), although he

fled from prison in your land; and when he stepped on the beach the marks of the iron bands that had once

been round his ankles were yet red to the sight. There be none such as he in these days. But he is now in

This was the longdeferred funeral oration of Macy O'Shea, sometime member of the chaingang of Port

Arthur, in Van Dieman's Land, and subsequently runaway convict, beachcomber, cutteroff of whaleships,

and Gentleman of Leisure in Eastern Polynesia. And of his many known crimes the deed done in this isolated

The arrowy shafts of sunrise had scarce pierced the deep gloom of the silent forest ere the village woke to

life. Right beside the thatchcovered dwelling of Macy O'Shea, now a man of might, there towers a stately

tamanu tree; and, as the first faint murmur of women's voices arises from the native huts, there is a responsive

twittering and cooing in the thicklyleaved branches, and further back in the forest the heavy, booming note

With slow, languid step, Sera, the wife of Macy O'Shea, comes to the open door and looks out upon the

placid lagoon, now just rippling beneath the first breath of the tradewind, and longs for courage to go out

there there to the point of the reef and spring over among the sharks. The girl she is hardly yet a

woman shudders a moment and passes her white hand before her eyes, and then, with a sudden gust of

passion, the hand clenches. "I would kill him kill him, if there was but a ship here in which I could get

away! I would sell myself over and over again to the worst whaler's crew that ever sailed the Pacific if it

A heavy tread on the matted floor of the inner room and her face pales to the hue of death. But Macy O'Shea

is somewhat shy of his two years' wife this morning, and she hears the heavy steps recede as he walks over to

his oilshed. A flock of gogo cast their shadow over the lagoon as they fly westward, and the woman's eyes

follow them "Kill him, yes. I am afraid to die, but not to kill. And I am a stranger here, and if I ran a knife

into his fat throat, these natives would make me work in the tarofields, unless one wanted me for himself."

Then the heavy step returns, and she slowly faces round to the bloodshot eyes and drinkdistorted face of

the man she hates, and raises one hand to her lips to hide a blue and swollen bruise.

The man throws his short, squareset figure on a rough native sofa, and, passing one brawny hand

meditatively over his stubbly chin, says, in a voice like the snarl of a hungry wolf: "Here, I say, Sera, slew

"Ho, ho, 'Macy O'Shea,' is it? Well, just this. Don't be a fool. I was a bit put about last night, else I wouldn't

have been so quick with my fist. Cut your lip, I see. Well, you must forget it; any way, it's the first time I ever

touched you. But you ought to know by now that I am not a man to be trifled with; no man, let alone a

woman, is going to set a course for Macy O'Shea to steer by. And, to come to the point at once, I want you to

understand that Carl Ristow's daughter is coming here. I want her, and that's all about it."

The woman laughed scornfully. "Yes, I know. That was why" she pointed to her lips. "Have you no

shame? I know you have no pity. But listen. I swear to you by the Mother of Christ that I will kill her kill

O'Shea's cruel mouth twitched and his jaws set, then he uttered a hoarse laugh. "By God! Has it taken you

A deadly hate gleamed in the dark, passionate eyes. "Jealous, Mother of God! jealous of a drunken, licentious

wretch such as you! I hate you hate you! If I had courage enough I would poison myself to be free from

O'Shea's eyes emitted a dull sparkle. "I wish you would, damn you! Yet you are game enough, you say, to kill

"Yes. But not for love of you, but because of the white blood in me. I can't I won't be degraded by you

"'Por Dios,' as your dad used to say before the devil took his soul, we'll see about that, my beauty. I suppose

because your father was a dd garlic eating, earringed Dago, and your mother a comebychance

"As good as you, O bloodyhanded dog of an English convict. He was a man, and the only wrong he ever did

The cruel eyes were close to hers now, and the rough, brawny hands gripped her wrists. "You spiteful

Portuguese quarterbred ! Call me a convict again, and I'll twist your neck like a fowl's. You shedevil!

I'd have made things easy for you but I won't now. Do you hear?" and the grip tightened. "Ristow's girl

will be here tomorrow, and if you don't knuckle down to her it'll be a case of 'Vamos' for you you can go

and get a husband among the natives," and he flung her aside and went to the god that ran him closest for his

O'Shea kept his word, for two days later Malia, the halfcaste daughter of Ristow, the trader at Ahunui,

stepped from out her father's whaleboat in front of O'Shea's house. The transaction was a perfectly legitimate

one, and Malia did not allow any inconvenient feeling of modesty to interfere with such a lucrative

arrangement as this, whereby her father became possessed of a tun of oil and a bag of Chilian dollars, and she

of much finery. In those days missionaries had not made much head way, and gentlemen like Messrs Ristow

And so Malia, dressed as a native girl, with painted cheeks and bare bosom, walked demurely up from the

boat to the purchaser of her sixteenyears'old beauty, who, with arms folded across his broad chest, stood in

the middle of the path that led from the beach to his door. And within, with set teeth and a knife in the bosom

The bulky form of O'Shea darkened the doorway. "Sera," he called in English, with a mocking, insulting

Sera came, walking slowly, with a smile on her lips, and, holding out her left hand to Malia, said in the native

"Why," said O'Shea, with mocking jocularity, "that's a lefthanded welcome, Sera."

"Aye," said the girl with the White Man's blood, "my right hand is for this" and the knife sank home into

Malia's yellow bosom. "A cold bosom for you tonight, Macy O'Shea," she laughed, as the value of a tun of

The native drum was beating. As the bloodquickening boom reverberated through the village, the natives

came out from their huts and gathered around the House of the Old Men, where, with bound hands and feet,

Sera, the White Man's wife, sat, with her back to one of the centreposts. And opposite her, sitting like a

native on a mat of kapau, was the burly figure of O'Shea, with the demon of disappointed passion eating

The people all detested her, especially the softvoiced, slenderframed women. In that one thing savages

resemble Christians the deadly hatred with which some women hate those of their sex whom they know to

be better and more pure than themselves. So the matter was decided quickly. Mesi so they called O'Shea

should have justice. If he thought death, let it be death for this woman who had let out the blood of his

new wife. Only one man, Loloku the Boar Hunter, raised his voice for her, because Sera had cured him of a

bad wound when his leg had been torn open by the tusk of a wild boar. But the dull glare from the eyes of

O'Shea fell on him, and he said no more. Then at a sign from the old men the people rose from the mats, and

two unbound the cords of afa from the girl, and led her out into the square, and looked at O'Shea.

Ristow's boat had been hauled up, turned over, and covered with the rough mats called kapau to keep off the

heat of the sun. With staggering feet, but undaunted heart, the girl Sera was led down. Only once she turned

her head and looked back. Perhaps Loloku would try again. Then, as they came to the boat, a young girl, at a

sign from O'Shea, took off the loose blouse, and they placed her, face downwards, across the bilge of the

boat, and two pair of small, eager, brown hands each seized one of hers and dragged the white, rounded arms

well over the keel of the boat. O'Shea walked round to that side, drawing through his hands the long, heavy,

and serrated tail of the fai the gigantic stingingray of Oceana. He would have liked to wield it himself,

but then he would have missed part of his revenge he could not have seen her face. So he gave it to a

native, and watched, with the smile of a fiend, the white back turn black and then into bloody red as it was cut

The sight of the inanimate thing that had given no sign of its agony beyond the shudderings and twitchings of

torn and mutilated flesh was, perhaps, disappointing to the tiger who stood and watched the dark stream that

flowed down on both sides of the boat. Loloku touched his arm "Mesi, stay thy hand. She is dead else."

"Ah," said O'Shea, "that would be a pity; for with one hand shall she live to plant taro."

And, hatchet in hand, he walked in between the two brown women who held her hands. They moved aside

and let go. Then O'Shea swung his arm; the blade of the hatchet struck into the planking, and the right hand

A man put his arms around her, and lifted her off the boat. He placed his hand on the bloodstained bosom

BETWEEN Nanomea and Nanomaga two of the Ellice Group but within a few miles of the latter, is an

extensive submerged shoal, on the charts called the Grand Cocal Reef, but by the people of the two islands

known as Tia Kau (The Reef). On the shallowest part there are from four to ten fathoms of water, and here in

heavy weather the sea breaks. The British cruiser Basilisk, about 1870, sought for the reef, but reported it as

nonexistent. Yet the Tia Kati is well known to many a Yankee whaler and trading schooner, and is a

favourite fishingground of the people of Nanomaga when the sharks give them a chance.

One night Atupa, Chief of Nanomaga, caused a huge fire to be lit on the beach as a signal to the people of

Nanomea that a malaga, or party of voyagers, was coming over. Both islands are low not more than

fifteen feet above sealevel and are distant from one another about thirtyeight miles. The following night

the reflection of the answering fire on Nanomea was seen, and Atupa prepared to send away his people in

seven canoes. They would start at sundown, so as to avoid paddling in the heat (the Nanomagans have no

sailing canoes), and be guided to Nanomea, which they expected to reach early in the morning, by the far

distant glare of the great fires of coconut and pandanus leaves kindled at intervals of a few hours. About

seventy people were to go, and all that day the little village busied itself in preparing for the Nanomeans gifts

Atupa, the heathen chief, was troubled in his mind in those days of August 1872. The John Williams had

touched at the island and landed a Samoan missionary, who had pressed him to accept Christianity. Atupa,

dreading a disturbing element in his little community, had, at first, declined; but the ship had come again, and

the chief having consented to try the new religion, a teacher landed. But since then he and his subchiefs had

consulted the oracle, and had been told that the shades of Maumau Tahori and Foilagi, their deified ancestors,

had answered that the new religion was unacceptable to them, and that the Samoan teacher must be killed or

sent away. And for this was Atupa sending off some of his people to Nanomea with gifts of goodwill to the

chiefs to beseech them to consult their oracles also, so that the two islands might take concerted action

against this new foreign god, whose priests said that all men were equal, that all were bad, and He and His

The night was calm when the seven canoes set out. Forty men and thirty women and children were in the

party, and the craft were too deeply laden for any but the smoothest sea. On the ama (outrigger) of each canoe

were the baskets of food and bundles of mats for their hosts, and seated on these were the children, while the

women sat with the men and helped them to paddle. Two hours' quick paddling brought them to the

shoalwater of Tia Kau, and at the same moment they saw to the N.W. the skyglare of the first guiding fire.

It was then that the people in the first canoe, wherein was Palu, the daughter of Atupa, called out to those

behind to prepare their asu (balers), as a heavy squall was coming down from the eastward. Then Laheu, an

old warrior in another canoe, cried out that they should return on their track a little and get into deep water;

"for," said he, "if we swamp, away from Tia Kau, it is but a little thing, but here " and he clasped his

hands rapidly together and then tore them apart. They knew what he meant the sharks that, at nighttime

forsaking the deep waters, patrolled in droves of thousands the shallow waters of the reef to devour the turtle

and the schools of tafau uli and other fish. In quick, alarmed silence the people headed back, but even then

the first fierce squall struck them, and some of the frail canoes began to fill at once. "I matagi! i matagi! (head

to the wind)" a man called out; "head to the wind, or we perish! 'Tis but a puff and it is gone."

But it was more than a puff. The seven canoes, all abreast, were still in shallow water, and the paddlers kept

them dead in the teeth of the whistling wind and stinging rain, and called out words of encouragement to one

another and to the women and children, as another black squall burst upon them and the curling seas began to

break. The canoe in which was Atupa's daughter was the largest and best of all the seven, but was much

overladen, and on the outrigger grating were four children. These the chief's daughter was endeavouring to

shield from the rain by covering them with a mat, when one of them, a little girl, endeavoured to steady

herself by holding to one of the thin pieces of grating; it broke, and her arm fell through and struck the water,

and in an instant she gave a dull, smothered wail. Palu, the woman, seized her by her hair and pulled the child

And then in the blackness of night, lightened now by the white, seething, boiling surge, the people saw in the

phosphorescent water countless hundreds of the savage terrors of the Tia Kau darting hither and thither

amongst the canoes for the smell of blood had brought them together instantly. Presently a great grey

monster tore the paddle from out the hands of the steersman of the canoe wherein were the terrified Palu and

the four children, and then, before the man for'ard could bring her head to the wind, she broached to and

filled. Like ravening wolves the sharks dashed upon their prey, and ere the people had time to give more than

a despairing cry, those hideous jaws and gleaming cruel teeth had sealed their fate. Maddened with fear, the

rest of the people threw everything out of the six other canoes to lighten them, and as the bundles of mats and

baskets of food touched the water the sharks seized and bit, tore and swallowed. Then, one by one, every

paddle was grabbed from the hands of the paddlers, and the canoes broached to and filled in that sea of death

all save one, which was carried by the force of the wind away from the rest. In this were the only

The agony could not have lasted long. "Were I to live as long as he whom the faifeau (missionary) tells us

lived to be nine hundred and sixty and nine, I shall hear the groans and cries and shrieks of that po malaia,

that night of evil luck," said one of the two who lived, to Denison, the white trader at Nanomea. "Once did I

have my paddle fast in the mouth of a little devil, and it drew me backwards, backwards, over the stern till

my head touched the water. Tah! but I was strong with fear, and held on, for to lose it meant death by the

teeth. And Tulua he who came out alive with me, seized my feet and held on, else had I gone. But look

thou at this" and he pointed to his scarred neck and back and shoulders "ere I could free my foe (paddle)

and raise my head, I was bitten thus by others. Ah, Papalagi, some men are born to wisdom, but most are

fools. Had not Atupa been filled with vain fears, he had killed the man who caused him to lose so many of

"So," said the white man, "and wouldst thou have killed the man who brought thee the new faith? Fie!"

"Aye, that would I in those days when I was po uli uli. But not now, for I am Christian. Yet had Atupa

killed and buried the stranger, we could have lied and said he died of a sickness when they of his people came

to seek him. And then had I now my son Tagipo with me, he who went into the bellies of the sharks at Tia

I STAYED once at Rotoava in the Low Archipelago, Eastern Polynesia while suffering from injuries

received in a boat accident one wild night. My host, the Rotoava trader, was a sociable old pirate, whose

convivial soul would never let him drink alone. He was by trade a boatbuilder, having had, in his early days,

a shed at Miller's Point, in Sydney, where he made money and married a wife. But this latter event was poor

Tom Oscott's undoing, and in the end he took his chest of tools on board the Thyra trading brig, and sailed

away to Polynesia. Finally, after many years' wandering, he settled down at Rotoava as a trader and

The only method by which I could avoid his incessant invitations to "have another" was to get his wife and

children to carry me down to his workshed, built in a lovely spot surrounded by giant puka trees. Here,

under the shade, I had my mats spread, and with one of his children sitting at my head to fan away the flies, I

lay and watched, through the belt of coconuts that lined the beach, the blue rollers breaking on the reef and

Tom was in the bush one morning when his family carried me to the boatshed. He had gone for a log of

seasoned toa wood to another village. At noon he returned, and I heard him bawling for me. His little

daughter, the flybrusher, gave an answering yell, and then Tom walked down the path, carrying two bottles

of beer; behind him Lucia, his eldest daughter, a monstrous creature of giggles, adipose tissue, and warm

heart, with glasses and a plate of crackers; lastly, old Marie, the wife, with a little table.

"By , you've a lot more sense'n me. It's better lyin' here in the cool, than foolin' around in the sun; so

The Maker of Boats sat on his bench, and said that he knew of a brewer's carter in Sydney who, at

Merriman's "pub," on Miller's Point, had had a cask of beer roll over him. Smashed seven ribs, one arm, and

one thigh. Doctors gave him up; undertaker's man called on his wife for coffin order but a sailor chap said

he'd pull him through. Got an indiarubber tube and made him suck up as much beer as he could hold; kept it

up till all his bones "setted" again, and he recovered. Why shouldn't I if I only drank enough?

"Hurry up, old darkskin!" this to the faded Marie. Uttering merely the word "Hog!" she drew the cork. I

had to drink some, and every hour or so Tom would say it was very hot, and open yet another bottle. At last I

escaped the beer by nearly dying, and then the kind old fellow hurried away in his boat to Apatiki another

island of the group and came back with some bottles of claret, bought from the French trader there. With

him came two visitors a big halfcaste of middle age, and his wife, a girl of twenty or thereabout. This

I was in the house when Tom returned, enjoying a longdenied smoke. Pallou and his wife entered and

greeted me. The man was a fine, wellsetup fellow, wiry and muscular, with deepset eyes, and bearing

across his right cheek a heavy scar. His wife was a sweet, dainty little creature with red lips, dazzling teeth,

hazel eyes, and long wavy hair. The first thing I noticed about her was, that instead of squatting on a mat in

native fashion, she sank into a wide chair, and lying back enquired, with a pleasant smile and in perfect

English, whether I was feeling any better. She was very fair, even for a Paumotuan halfcaste, as I thought

she must be, and I said to Pallou, "Why, any one would take your wife to be an Englishwoman!"

"Not I," said Taloi, with a rippling laugh, as she commenced to make a bananaleaf cigarette; "I am a

fullblooded South Sea Islander. I belong to Apatiki, and was born there. Perhaps I have white blood in me.

Who knows? only my wise mother. But when I was twelve years old I was adopted by a gentleman in

Papeite, and he sent me to Sydney to school. Do you know Sydney? Well, I was three years with the Misses

F, in Street. My goodness! I was glad to leave and so were the Misses F to see me go.

They said I was downright wicked, because one day I tore the dress off a girl who said my skin was tallowy,

like my name. When I came back to Tahiti my guardian took me to Raiatea, where he had a business, and

"Oh, shut up, Taoi!" growled the deepvoiced Pallou, who sat beside me. "What the deuce does this man care

"Shut up yourself, you brute! Can't I talk to any one I like, you turtleheaded fool? Am I not a good wife to

you, you great, overgrown savage? Won't you let a poor devil of a woman talk a little? Look here, Tom, do

you see that flash jacket he's wearing? Well, I sat up two nights making that for him to come over here

The big halfcaste looked at Tom and then at me. His lips twitched with suppressed passion, and a dangerous

"Here, I say, Taloi," broke in Tom, goodhumouredly, "just go easy a bit with Ted. As for him alooking at

Taloi's laugh, clear as the note of a bird, answered him, and then she said she was sorry, and the lines around

Pallou's rigid mouth softened down. It was easy to see that this grim halfwhite loved, for all her bitter

Presently Taloi and Lucia went out to bathe, and Pallou remained with me. Tom joined us, and for a while no

one spoke. Then the trader, laying down his pipe on the table, drew his seat closer, and commenced, in low

tones, a conversation in Tahitian with Pallou. From the earnest manner of old Tom and the sullen gloom that

At last Tom addressed me. "Look here, , Ted here is in a mess, and we've just been atalkin' of it over,

"Well, you see, it come about this way. You heard this chap's missus Taloi atalkin' about the

Frenchman that wanted to marry her. He had chartered a little schooner in Papeite to go to Raiatea. Pallou

here was mate, and, o' course, he being from the same part of the group as Taloi, she ups and tells him that

the Frenchman wanted to marry her straightaway; and then I s'pose, the two gets a bit chummy, and Pallou

tells her that if she didn't want the man he'd see as how she wasn't forced agin' her will. So when the vessel

gets to Raiatea it fell calm, just about sunset. The Frenchman was in a hurry to get ashore, and tells his

skipper to put two men in the boat and some grub, as he meant to pull ashore to his station. So they put the

boat over the side, and Frenchy and Taoi and Pallou and two native chaps gets in and pulls for the land.

"They gets inside Uturoa about midnight. 'Jump out,' says the Frenchman to Taloi as soon as the boat touches

the beach; but the girl wouldn't, but ties herself up around Pallou and squeals. 'Sakker!' says the Frenchy, and

he grabs her by the hair and tries to tear her away. ''Ere, stop that,' says Pallou; 'the girl ain't willin',' an' he

pushes Frenchy away. 'Sakker!' again, and Frenchy whips out his pistol and nearly blows Pallou's face off'n

him; and then, afore he knows how it was done, Ted sends his knife chunk home into the other fellow's

throat. The two native sailors runned away ashore, and Pallou and Taloi takes the oars and pulls out again

until they drops. Then a breeze comes along, and they up stick and sails away and gets clear o' the group, and

brings up, after a lot of sufferin', at Rurutu. And ever since then there's been a French gunboat alookin' for

Pallou, and he's been hidin' at Apatiki for nigh on a twelvemonth, and has come over here now to see if, when

your ship comes back, you can't give him and his missus a passage away somewhere to the westward, out o'

I promised I would "work it" with the captain, and Pallou put out his brawny hand the hand that "drove it

home into Frenchy's throat" and grasped mine in silence. Then he lifted his jacket and showed me his

"I don't want money," I said. "If you have told me the whole story, I would help any man in such a fix as

you." And then Taloi, fresh from her bath, came in and sat down on the mat, whilst fat Lucia combed and

dressed her glossy hair and placed therein scarlet hisbiscus flowers; and to show her returned good temper,

she took from her lips the cigarette she was smoking, and offered it to the grim Pallou.

A month later we all three left Rotoava, and Pallou and Taloi went ashore at one of the Hervey Group, where

I gave him charge of a station with a small stock of trade, and we sailed away eastward to Pitcairn and

Pallou did a good business, and was well liked; and some seven months afterwards, when we were at Maga

Reva, in the Gambier Group, I got a letter from him. "Business goes well," he wrote, "but Taloi is ill; I think

But I was never to see that particular island again, as the firm sent another vessel in place of ours to get

Pallou's produce. When the captain and the supercargo went ashore, a white trader met them, with a roll of

"Yes. A few months after he arrived here, that pretty little wife of his died. He came to me, and asked if I

would come and take stock with him. I said he seemed in a bit of a hurry to start stocktaking before the poor

thing was buried; but anyhow, I went, and we took stock, and he counted his cash, and asked me to lock the

place up if anything happened to him. Then we had a drink, and he bade me goodday, and said he was going

to sit with Taloi awhile, before they took her away. He sent the native women out of the bedroom, and the

next minute I heard a shot. He'd done it, right enough. Right through his brain, poor chap. I can tell you he

thought a lot of that girl of his. There's the two graves, over there by that fetau tree. Here's his stocklist and

bag of cash and keys. Would you mind giving me that pair of rubber seaboots he left?"

IT was in Steinberger's time. A trader had come up to Apia in his boat from the end of Savaii, the largest of

the Samoan Group, and was on his way home again, when the falling tide caused him to stop awhile at

Mulinu'u Point, about two miles from Apia. Here he designed to smoke and talk, and drink kava at the great

camp with some hospitable native acquaintances, during the rising of the water. Soon he was taking his ease

Now this trader lived at Falealupo, at the extreme westerly end of Savaii; but the Samoans, by reason of its

isolation and extremity, have for ages called it by another name an unprintable one and so some of the

people present began to jest with the trader for living in such a place. He fell in with their humour, and said

that if those present would find for him a wife, a girl unseared by the breath of scandal, he would leave

"Malie!" said an old dame, with one eye and white hair, "the papalagi is inspired to speak wisdom tonight;

for at Safune grow the sweetest nuts and the biggest taro and breadfruit; and lo! here among the

kavachewers is a young maid from Safune mine own granddaughter Salome. And against her name can

no one in Samoa laugh in the hollow of his hand," and the old creature, amid laughter and cries of Isa! e le

ma le lo matua (The old woman is without shame), crept over to the trader, and, with one skinny hand on his

The trader looked at the girl at Salome. She had, at her grandmother's speech, turned her head aside, and

taking the "chaw" of kavaroot from her pretty mouth, dissolved into shamefaced tears. The trader was a

man of quick perceptions, and he made up his mind to do in earnest what he had said in jest this because

of the tears of Salome. He quickly whispered to the old woman, "Come to the boat before the full of the tide,

When the kava was ready for drinking the others present had forgotten all about the old woman and Salome,

who had both crept away unobserved, and an hour or two was passed in merriment, for the trader was a man

well liked. Then, when he rose and said to fa, they begged him not to attempt to pass down in his boat inside

the reef, as he was sure to be fired upon, for how were their people to tell a friend from an enemy in the black

night? But the white man smiled, and said his boat was too heavily laden to face the ocean swell. So they

bade him to fa, and called out manuia oe! as he lifted the door of thatch and went.

The old woman awaited him, holding the girl by the hand. On the ground lay a basket strongly tied up.

Salome still wept, but the old woman angrily bade her cease and enter the boat, which the crew had now

pushed bowon to the beach. The old woman lifted the basket and carefully put it on board.

"Be sure," she said to the crew, "not to sit on it for it is very ripe breadfruit that I am taking to my people in

"Give them here to me," said the trader, and he put the basket in the stern out of the way. The old woman

came aft, too, and crouched at his feet and smoked a sului. The cool landbreeze freshened as the sail was

hoisted, and then the crew besought the trader not to run down inside the reef. Bullets, they said, if fired in

plenty, always hit something, and the sea was fairly smooth outside the reef. And old Lupetea grasped his

hand and muttered in his ear, "For the sake of this my little daughter go outside. See, now, I am old, and to lie

when so near death as I am is foolish. Be warned by me and be wise; sail out into the ocean, and at daylight

we shall be at Salua in Manono. Then thou canst set my feet on the shore I and the basket. But the girl

shall go with thee. Thou canst marry her, if that be to thy mind, in the fashion of the papalagi, or take her fa'a

Samoa. Thus will I keep faith with thee. If the girl be false, her neck is but little and thy fingers strong."

Now the trader thought in this wise: "This is well for me, for if I get the girl away thus quietly from all her

relations I shall save much in presents," and his heart rejoiced, for although not mean he was a careful man.

So he steered his boat seaward, between the seething surf that boiled and hissed on both sides of the boat

As the boat sailed past the misty line of cloudcapped Upolu, the trader lifted the girl up beside him and

spoke to her. She was not afraid of him, she said, for many had told her he was a good man, and not an ula

vale (scamp), but she wept because now, save her old grandmother, all her kinsfolk were dead. Even but a

day and a half ago her one brother was killed with her cousin. They were strong men, but the bullets were

swift, and so they died. And their heads had been shown at Matautu. For that she had grieved and wept and

"Poor little devil!" said the trader to himself "hungry." Then he opened a locker and found a tin of

sardines. Not a scrap of biscuit. There was plenty of biscuit, though, in the boat, in fiftypound tins, but on

these mats were spread, whereon his crew were sleeping. He was about to rouse them when he remembered

the old dame's basket of ripe breadfruit. He laughed and looked at her. She, too, slept, coiled up at his feet.

But first he opened the sardines and placed them beside the girl, and motioned her to steer. Her eyes gleamed

like diamonds in the darkness as she answered his glance, and her soft fingers grasped the tiller. Very

A quick stroke of his knife cut the cinnet that lashed the sides together. He felt inside. "Only two, after all,

but big ones, and no mistake. Wrapped in cloth, too! I wonder Hell and Furies! what's this?" as his

fingers came in contact with something that felt like a human eye. Drawing his hand quickly back, he

fumbled in his pockets for a match, and struck it. Breadfruit! No. Two heads with closed eyes and livid lips

blue with the pallor of death, showing their white teeth. And Salome covered her face and slid down in the

bottom of the boat again, and wept afresh for her cousin and brother, and the boat came up in the wind, but no

The trader was angry. But after he had tied up the basket again he put the boat on her course once more and

called to the girl. She crept close to him and nestled under his overcoat, for the morning air came across the

sea from the dewladen forests, and she was chilled. Then she told the story of how her granddam had

begged the heads from those of Malietoa's troops who had taken them at Matautu, and then gone to the camp

at Mulinu'u in the hope of getting a passage in some boat to Manono, her country, where she would fain bury

them. And that night he had come, and old Lupetea had rejoiced, and sworn her to secrecy about the heads in

the basket. And that also was why Lupetea was afraid of the boat going down inside the passage, for there

were many enemies to be met with, and they would have shot old Lupetea because she was of Manono. That

was all. Then she ate the sardines, and, leaning her head against the trader's bosom, fell asleep.

As the first note of the great grey pigeon sounded the dawn, the trader's boat sailed softly up to the Salua

beach, and old Lupetea rose, and, bidding the crew goodbye, and calling down blessings on the head of the

good and clever white man, as she rubbed his and the girl's noses against her own, she grasped her Basket of

Breadfruit and went ashore. Then the trader, with Salome nestling to his side, sailed out again into the ocean

THE two ghastly creatures sat facing each other in their wordless misery as the wind died away and the

tattered remnants of the sail hung motionless after a last faint flutter. The Thing that sat aft for surely so

grotesquely horrible a vision could not be a Man pointed with hands like the talons of a bird of prey to the

purple outline of the island in the west, and his black, bloodbaked lips moved, opened, and essayed to

speak. The other being that, with bare and skinny arms clasped around its bony knees, sat crouched in the

"Ducie Island, Enderby," said the first in a hoarse, rattling whisper; "no one on it; but water is there . . . and

At the word "water" the listener gave a curious gibbering chuckle, unclasped his hands from his knees, and

"And the current is setting us down to it, wind or no wind. I believe we'll see this pleasuretrip through, after

The man whom he called Enderby sank his head again upon his knees, and his dulled and bloodshot eyes

rested on something that lay at the captain's feet the figure of a woman enveloped from her shoulders

down in a ragged native mat. For some hours past she had lain thus, with the grey shadows of coming

dissolution hovering about her pallid face, and only the faintest movement of lips and eyelids to show that

The blackwhiskered man who steered looked down for a second upon the face beneath him with the

unconcern for others born of the agony of thirst and despair, and again his gaunt face turned to the land. Yet

she was his wife, and not six weeks back he had experienced a cold sort of satisfaction in the possession of so

He remembered that day now. Enderby, the passenger from Sydney, and he were walking the poop; his wife

was asleep in a deckchair on the other side. An open book lay in her lap. As the two men passed and

repassed her, the one noted that the other would glance in undisguised and honest admiration at the figure in

the chair. And Enderby, who was as open as the day, had said to him, Langton, that the sleeping Mrs Langton

The sail stirred, filled out, and then drooped again, and the two spectres, with the sleeping woman between,

still sat with their hungry eyes gazing over toward the land. As the sun sank, the outlines of the verdureclad

summits and beetling cliffs stood forth clearly for a short minute or two, as if to mock them with hope, and

Another hour, and a faint sigh came from the ragged mat. Enderby, for ever on the watch, had first seen a

white hand silhouetted against the blackness of the covering, and knew that she was still alive. And as he was

about to call Langton, who lay in the sternsheets muttering in hideous dreams, he heard the woman's voice

calling him. With panting breath and trembling limbs he crawled over beside her and gently touched her

"Thank God, you are alive, Mrs Langton. Shall I wake Captain Langton? We must be nearing the land."

"No, don't. Let him sleep. But I called you, Mr Enderby, to lift me up. I want to see where the rain is coming

Enderby groaned in anguish of spirit. "Rain? God has forgotten us, I ," and then he stopped in shame at

The soft, tender tones again "Ah, do help me up, please, I can feel the rain is near." Then the man, with

"Why, there it is, Mr Enderby and the land as well! And it's a heavy squall, too," and she pointed to a

moving, inky mass that half concealed the black shadow of the island. "Quick, take my mat; one end of it is

"Langton, Laangton! Here's a rain squall coming!" and Enderby pressed the woman's hand to his lips and

kissed it again and again. Then with eager hands he took the mat from her, and staggering forward to the

bows stretched the sound end across and bellied it down. And then the moving mass that was once black, and

Langton, with an empty beeftin in his hand, stumbled over his wife's figure, plunged the vessel into the

"Curse you, you brute!" shouted Enderby through the wild noise of the hissing rain, "where is your wife? Are

Langton answered not, but drank once more. Then Enderby, with an oath, tore the tin from his hand, filled it

and took it to her, holding her up while she drank. And as her eyes looked gratefully into his while he placed

her tenderly back in the sternsheets, the madness of a moment overpowered him, and he kissed her on the

Concerned only with the nectar in the mat, Langton took no regard of Enderby as he opened the little locker,

pulled out a coarse dungaree jumper, and wrapped it round the thinlyclad and drenched figure of the

She was weeping now, partly from the joy of knowing that she was not to die of the agonies of thirst in an

open boat in midPacific, and partly because the water had given her strength to remember that Langton had

She had married him because of his handsome face and dashing manner for one reason, and because her

pious Scotch father, also a SydneyTahitian trading captain, had pointed out to her that Langton had made

and was still making money in the island trade. Her ideal of a happy life was to have her husband leave the

sea and buy an estate either in Tahiti or Chili. She knew both countries well: the first was her birthplace, and

between there and Valparaiso and Sydney her moneygrubbing old father had traded for years, always

carrying with him his one daughter, whose beauty the old man regarded as a "vara vain thing," but likely to

Mrs Langton cared for her husband in a prosaic sort of way, but she knew no more of his inner nature and

latent utter selfishness a year after her marriage than she had known a year before. Yet, because of the strain

of dark blood in her veins her mother was a Tahitian halfcaste she felt the mastery of his savage

resolution in the face of danger in the thirteen days of horror that had elapsed since the brigantine crashed on

an uncharted reef between Pitcairn and Ducie Islands, and the other boat had parted company with them,

taking most of the provisions and water. And to hard, callous natures such as Langton's women yield easily

But that savage curse still sounded in her ears, and unconsciously made her think of Enderby, who had

always, ever since the eighth day in the boat, given her half his share of water. Little did she know the agony

it cost him the day before when the water had given out, to bring her the whole of his allowance. And as she

drank, the man's heart had beaten with a dull sense of pity, the while his baser nature called out, "Fool! it is

At daylight the boat was close in to the land, and Langton, in his cool, cynical fashion, told his wife and

Enderby to finish up the last of the meat and biscuit for if they capsized getting through into the lagoon,

he said, they would never want any more. He had eaten all he wanted unknown to the others, and looked with

an unmoved face at Enderby soaking some biscuit in the tin for his wife. Then, with the ragged sail fluttering

to the wind, Langton headed the boat through the passage into the glassy waters of the lagoon, and the two

tottering men, leading the woman between them, sought the shelter of a thicket scrub, impenetrable to the

rays of the sun, and slept. And then for a week Enderby went and scoured the reefs for food for her.

One day at noon Enderby awoke. The woman still slept heavily, the first sign of returning strength showing

as a faint tinge in the pallor of her cheek. Langton was gone. A sudden chill passed over him had Langton

taken the boat and left them to die on lonely Ducie? With hasty step Enderby hurried to the beach. The boat

was there, safe. And at the farther end of the beach he saw Langton, sitting on the sand, eating.

"Selfish brute!" muttered Enderby. "I wonder what he's got?" just then he saw, close overhead, a huge ripe

pandanus, and, picking up a heavy, flat piece of coral, he tried to ascend the triplicated bole of the tree and

hammer off some of the fruit. Langton looked up at him, and showed his white teeth in a mocking smile at

the futile effort. Enderby walked over to him, stone in hand. He was not a vindictive man, but he had grown

to hate Langton fiercely during the past week for his selfish neglect of his wife. And here was the fellow.

gorging himself on turtleeggs, and his tender, delicate wife living on shellfish and pandanus.

"Langton," he said, speaking thickly and pretending not to notice the remainder of the eggs, "the tide is out,

and we may get a turtle in one of the pools if you come with me. Mrs Langton needs something better than

that infernal pandanus fruit. Her lips are quite sore and bleeding from eating it."

The Inner Nature came out. "Are they? My wife's lips seem to give you a very great deal of concern. She has

not said anything to me. And I have an idea" the look in Enderby's face shamed into silence the slander

he was about to utter. Then he added coolly "But as for going with you after a turtle, thanks, I won't. I've

found a nest here, and have had a good square feed. If the cursed mano'war hawks and boobies hadn't been

here before me I'd have got the whole lot." Then he tore the skin off another egg with his teeth.

"And you have eaten all but those?" pointing with savage contempt to five of the round, white balls; "give

"My dear man, Louise has too much Island blood in her not to be able to do better than I or you in a

case like ours. And as you have kindly constituted yourself her providore, you had better go and look for a

When Enderby returned, he found Mrs Langton sitting up on the creepercovered mound that overlooked

"Come away from here," he said, "into the shade. I have found a few turtleeggs."

They walked back a little and sat down. But for the wild riot in his brain, Enderby would have noted that

"You must be hungry," he thought he was saying to her, and he placed the white objects in her lap.

She turned them slowly over and over in her hands, and then dropped them with a shudder. Some were

"I swear to you, Mrs Lan" (the name stuck in his throat) "I never meant it. As God is my witness, I

swear it. If we ever escape from here I will give myself up to justice as a murderer."

The woman, with hands spread over her face, shook her head from side to side and sobbed. Then she spoke.

"I thought I loved him, once. . . . Yet it was for me . . . and you saved my life over and over again in the boat.

All sinners are forgiven we are told. . . . Why should not you be? . . . and it was for me you did it. And I won't

let you give yourself up to justice or any one. I'll say he died in the boat." And then the laughter of hysterics.

When, some months later, the Josephine, whaler, of New London, picked them up on her way to Japan, vi

the Carolines and Pelews, the captain satisfactorily answered the query made by Enderby if he could marry

them. He "rayther thought he could. A man who was used ter ketchin' and killin'whales, the powerfullest

creature of Almighty Gawd's creation, was ekal to marryin' a pair of unfortunit human beans in sich a

And, by the irony of fate, the Enderbys (that isn't their name) are now living in a group of islands where

there's quite a trade done in turtle, and whenever a ship's captain comes to dine with them they never have the

local dish turtle eggs for dinner. "We see them so often," Enderby explains, "and my wife is quite tired

THERE was the island, only ten miles away, and there it had been for a whole week. Sometimes we had got

near enough to see Long Charley's house and the figures of natives walking on the yellow beach; and then the

westerly current would set us away to leeward again. But that night a squall came up, and in half an hour we

were running down to the land. When the lights on the beach showed up we hoveto until daylight, and then

We got in close to the reef, and could see that the trader's coprahouse was full, for there were also hundreds

of bags outside, awaiting our boats. It was clearly worth staying for. The trader, a tall, thin, pyjamaclad

man, came down to the water's edge, waved his long arm, and then turned back and sat down on a bag of

copra. We went about and passed the village again, and once more the long man came to the water's edge,

In the afternoon we saw a native and Charley together among the bags; then the native left him, and, as it was

now low tide, the kanaka was able to walk to the edge of the reef, where he signalled to us. Seeing that he

meant to swim off, the skipper went in as close as possible, and backed his foreyard. Watching his chance for

a lull in the yet fierce breakers, the native slid over the reef and swam out to us as only a Line Islander or a

"Who? Charley? Oh, he fine, plenty copra. Tapa my bowels are filled with the sea for one dollar! Here

ariki vaka (captain) and you tuhi tuhi (supercargo)," said the native, removing from his perforated and

pendulous earlobe a little roll of leaf, "take this letter from the mean man that giveth but a dollar for facing

such a galu (surf). Hast plenty tobacco on board, friends of my heart? Apa, the surf! Not a canoe crew could

the white man get to face it. Is it good twist tobacco, friends, or the flat cakes? Know that I am a man of

Nanomea, not one of these dogeating people here, and a strong swimmer, else the letter had not come."

The supercargo took the note. It was rolled up in many thicknesses of bananaleaf, which had kept it dry

"DEAR FRIENDS, I have Been waiting for you for near 5 months. I am Chock full of Cobberah and

Shark Fins one Ton. I am near Starved Out, No Biscit, no Beef, no flour, not Enything to Eat. for god's Saik

send me a case of Gin ashore if you Don't mean to Hang on till the sea goes Down or I shall Starve. Not a

Woman comes Near me because I am Run out of Traid, so please try also to Send a Peece of Good print, as

there are some fine Women here from Nukunau, and I think I can get one for a wife if I am smart. If you

Can't take my Cobberah, and mean to Go away, send the Squair face, for god's saik, and something for the

We parcelled a bottle of gin round with a small coir line, and sent it ashore by the Nanomea man. Charley and

a number of natives came to the edge of the reef to lend a hand in landing the bearer of the treasure. Then

they all waded back to the beach, headed by the white man in the dirty pyjamas and soddenlooking fala hat.

"I bet a dollar that fellow wouldn't swap billets with the angel Gabriel at this partikler moment," said our

We started weighing and shipping the copra next day. After finishing up, the solemn Charley invited the

skipper and supercargo to remain ashore till morning. His great trouble, he told us, was that he had not yet

secured a wife, "a reg'lar wife, y'know." He had, unluckily, "lost the run" of the last Mrs Charley during his

absence at another island of the group, and negotiations with various local young women had been broken off

owing to his having run out of trade. In the South Seas, as in the civilised world generally, to get the girl of

your heart is usually a mere matter of trade. There were, he told us with a melancholy look, "some fine

Nukunau girls here on a visit, but the one I want don't seem to care much about stayin', unless all this new

"Let's have a look at her," said the skipper, a man of kind impulses, who felt sorry at the intermittency of the

Long One's connubial relations. The tall, scraggy trader shambled to the door and bawled out: "Tibakwa,

The people, singing in the big moniep or townhouse, stopped their monotonous droning, and the name of

Tibakwa, was yelled vociferously throughout the village in true Gilbert Group style. In the Gilberts, if a

native in one corner of a house speaks to another in the opposite, he bawls loud enough to be heard a mile off.

Tibakwa (The Shark) was a short, squat fellow, with his broad back and chest scored and seamed with an

intricate and inartistic network of cicatrices made by sharks' teeth swords. His hair, straight, coarse, and

jetblack, was cut away square from just above his eyebrows to the top of his ears, leaving his fierce

countenance in a sort of frame. Each earlobe bore a load one had two or three sticks of tobacco, twined

in and about the distended circle of flesh, and the other a claspknife and wooden pipe. Stripped to the waist

he showed his muscular outlines to perfection, and he sat down unasked in the bold, selfconfident,

"Here," said the man of wounds, pointing outside, and he called out in a voice like the bellow of a bull

Tirau came in timidly, clothed only in an airiri or girdle, and slunk into a far corner.

The melancholy trader and the father pulled her out, and she dumped herself down in the middle of the room

"Fine girl, Charley," said the skipper, digging him in the ribs. "Ought to suit you, eh! Make a good little

Negotiations then began anew. Father willing to part, girl frightened commenced to cry. The astute

Charley brought out some new trade. Tirau's eye here displayed a faint interest. Charley threw her, with the

air of a prince, a whole piece of turkey twill, 12 yards value three dollars, cost about 2s. 3d. Tirau put out

a little hand and drew it gingerly toward her. Tibakwa gave us an atrocious wink.

And thus, without empty and hollow display, were two loving hearts made to beat as one. As a practical proof

of the solemnity of the occasion, the bridegroom then and there gave Tirau his bunch of keys, which she

carefully tied to a strand of her airiri, and, smoking one of the captain's Manillas, she proceeded to bash out

the mosquitoes from the nuptial couch with a fan. We assisted her, an hour afterwards, to hoist the sleeping

body of Long Charley therein, and, telling her to bathe his head in the morning with cold water, we rose to

"Tiakapo", said the good Little Wife, as she rolled up an empty square gin bottle in one of Charley's shirts for

a pillow, and disposed her graceful figure on the matted floor beside his bed, to fight mosquitoes until

ONE day Ned Burr, a fellow trader, walked slowly up the path to my station, and with a friendly nod sat

down and watched intently as, with native assistance, I set about salting some pork. Ned lived thirty miles

from my place, on a little island at the entrance to the lagoon. He was a prosperous man, and only drank

under the pressure of the monotony caused by the nonarrival of a ship to buy his produce. He would then

close his store, and, aided by a number of friendly male natives, start on a case of gin. But never a woman

went into Ned's house, though many visited the store, where Ned bought their produce, paid for it in trade or

Now, the Marshall Island women much resented this. Since Ned's wife had died, ten years previously, the

women, backed by the chiefs, had made most decided, but withal diplomatic, assaults upon his celibacy. The

old men of his village had respectfully and repeatedly reminded him that his state of singleness was not a

direct slight to themselves as leading men alone. If he refused to marry again he surely would not cast such a

reflection upon the personal characters of some two or three hundred young girls as to refuse a few of them

the position of honorary wives pro tem., or until he found one whom he might think worthy of higher

honours. But the slowthinking, methodical trader only opened a bottle of gin, gave them fair words and a

drink all round, and absolutely declined to open any sort of matrimonial negotiations.

"I'm come to hev some talk with you when you've finished saltin'," he said, as he rose and meditatively

"Right, old man," I said. "I'll come now," and we went into the big room and sat down.

"Air ye game ter come and see me get married?" he asked, looking away past me, through the open door, to

"Ned," I said solemnly, "I know you don't joke, so you must mean it. Of course I will. I'm sure all of us

fellows will be delighted to hear you're going to get some nice little carajz to lighten up that big house of

"Whew!" I said, "why, she's the daughter of the biggest chief on Arhnu. I didn't think any white man could

"Well, no," said Ned, stroking his beard meditatively, "I suppose I should feel a bit set up; but two years ago

her people said that, because I stood to them in the matter of some rifles when they had trouble with King

Jibberick, I could take her. She was rather young then, any way; but I've been over to Arhnu several times,

and I've had spies out, and damn me if I ever could hear a whisper agin' her. I'm told for sure that her father

and uncles would ha' killed any one that came after her. So I'm agoin' to take her and chance it."

"Ned," I said, "you know your own affairs and these people better than I do. Yet are you really going to pin

your faith on a Marshall Island girl? You are not like any of us traders. You see, we know what to expect

sometimes, and our morals are a lot worse than those of the natives. And it doesn't harrow our feelings much

if any one of us has to divorce a wife and get another; it only means a lot of new dresses and some guzzling,

drinking, and speechifying, and some bother in teaching the new wife how to make bread. But your wife that

died was a Manhikian another kind. They don't breed that sort here in the Marshalls. Think of it twice,

The girl was a beauty. There are many like her in that faraway cluster of coral atolls. That she was a chief's

child it was easy to see; the abject manner in which the commoner natives always behaved themselves in her

presence showed their respect for Lejennabon. Of course we all got very jolly. There were half a dozen of

us traders there, and we were, for a wonder, all on friendly terms. Lejennabon sat on a fine mat in the big

room, and in a sweetly dignified manner received the weddinggifts. One of our number, Charlie de Buis,

though in a state of chronic poverty, induced by steadfast adherence to square gin at five dollars a case, made

his offerings a gold locket covering a woman's miniature, a heavy gold ring, and a pair of fat, crossbred

"Who is this?" she asked, looking at the portrait "your white wife?" "No," replied the bashful Charles,

"another man's. That's why I give it away, curse her! But the ducks I bred myself on Madur."

A month or two passed. Then, on one Sunday afternoon, about dusk, I saw Ned's whaleboat coming over

across the lagoon. I met him on the beach. Trouble was in his face, yet his hard, im passive features were

such that only those who knew him well could discover it. Instead of entering the house, he silently motioned

me to come further along the sand, where we reached an open spot clear of coco palms. Ned sat down and

filled his pipe. I waited patiently. The wind had died away, and the soft swish and swirl of the tide as the

ripples lapped the beach was the only sound that broke upon the silence of the night.

"You were right. But it doesn't matter now . . ." He laughed softly. "A week ago a canoeparty arrived from

Ebon. There were two chiefs. Of course they came to my house to trade. They had plenty of money. There

were about a hundred natives belonging to them. The younger man was chief of Likieb a flash buck. The

first day he saw Lejennabon he had a lot too much to say to her. I watched him. Next morning my

toddycutter came and told me that the flash young chief from Likieb had stuck him up and drank my toddy,

and had said something about my wife you know how they talk in parables when they mean mischief. I

would have shot him for the toddy racket, but I was waitin' for a better reason. . . . The old hag who bosses

my cookshed said to me as she passed, 'Go and listen to a song of cunning over there' pointing to a

clump of breadfruit trees. I walked over quietly. Lejennabon and her girls were sitting down on mats.

Lejennabon and the girls bent their heads and said nothing. Then the devil's imp commenced again

Some of the girls laughed and whispered to Lejennabon. She shook her head, and looked around timorously.

Plain enough, wasn't it? Presently the boy creeps up to the fence, and drops over a wreath of yellow

blossoms. The girls laughed. One of them picked it up, and offered it to Lejennabon. She waved it away.

and they all laughed again, and Lejennabon put the wreath on her head, and I saw the brown hide of the boy

I went back to the house. I wanted to make certain she would follow the boy first. After a few minutes some

of Lejennabon's women came to me, and said they were going to the weather side of the island it's narrer

across, as you know to pick flowers. I said all right, to go, as I was going to do something else, so couldn't

come with them. Then I went to the traderoom and got what I wanted. The old cookhag showed me the

way they had gone, and grinned when she saw what I had slid down inside my pyjamas. I cut round and got

"The girls soon came along the path, and then stopped and talked to Lejennabon and pointed to a clump of

breadfruit trees standing in an arrowroot patch. She seemed frightened but went. Halfway through she

stopped, and then I saw my beauty raise his head from the ground and march over to her. I jest giv' him time

ter enjoy a smile, and then I stepped out and toppled him over. Right through his carcase them Sharp's

"The girl dropped too sheer funk. Old Lebauro, the cook, slid through the trees and stood over him, and

said, 'U, guk! He's a finemade man,' and gave me her knife; and then I collared Lejennabon, and "

"No, I couldn't hurt her. But I held her with one hand, she feeling dead and cold, like a wet deckswab; then

the old cookwoman undid my flash man's long hair, and, twining her skinny old claws in it, pulled it taut,

while I sawed at the chap's neck with my right hand. The knife was heavy and sharp, and I soon got the job

"I made her walk in front of me. Every time she dropped the head I slewed her round and made her lift it up

again. And the old cookdevil trotted astern o' us. When we came close to the town, I says to Lejennabon:

"There was a great rush o' people ter see the procession. They stood in a line on both sides of the path, and

"Presently we comes to where all the Likieb chief's people was quartered. They knew the head and ran back

for their rifles, but my crowd in the village was too strong, and, o' course, sided with me, and took away their

guns. Then the crowd gathers round my place, and I makes Lejennabon hold up the head and sing again

"'Listen,' I says to the people, 'listen to my wife singing a love song.' Then I takes the thing, wet and bloody,

and slings it into the middle of the Likieb people, and gave Lejennabon a shove and sent her inside."

I was thinking what would be the best thing to say, and could only manage "It's a bad business, Ned."

"Bad! That's where you're wrong," and, rising, Ned brushed the sand off the legs of his pyjamas. "It's just

about the luckiest thing as could ha' happened. Ye see, it's given Lejennabon a good idea of what may

happen to her if she ain't mighty correct. An' it's riz me a lot in the esteem of the people generally as a man

THEN the flag of "Bobby" Towns, of Sydney, was still mighty in the South Seas. The days had not come in

which steamers with brassbound supercargoes, carrying tin boxes and taking orders like merchants' bagmen,

for goods "to arrive," exploited the Ellice, Kingsmill, and Gilbert Groups. Bluffbowed old wavepunchers

like the Spec, the Lady Alicia and the E. K. Bateson plunged their clumsy hulls into the rolling swell of the

mid Pacific, carrying their "trade" of knives, axes, guns, bad rum, and good tobacco, instead of, as now,

white umbrellas, paper boots and shoes, German sewingmachines and fancy prints "zephyrs," the

smartlydressed papercollared supercargo of today calls them, as he submits a card of patterns to Emilia,

the native teacher's wife, who, as the greatest Lady in the Land, must have first choice.

In those days the sleek native missionary was an unknown quantity in the Tokelaus and Kingsmills, and the

local white trader answered all requirements. He was generally a rough character a runaway from some

Australian or American whaler, or a wandering Ishmael, who, for reasons of his own, preferred living among

the intractable, bawling, and povertystricken people of the equatorial Pacific to dreaming away his days in

Such a man was Probyn, who dwelt on one of the low atolls of the Ellice Islands. He had landed there one

day from a Sydney sperm whaler with a chest of clothes, a musket or two, and a tierce of twist tobacco; with

him came a savageeyed, fiercelooking native wife, over whose bared shoulders and bosom fell long waves

The second mate of the whaler, who was in charge of the boat, not liking the looks of the excited natives who

swarmed around the newcomer, bade him a hurried farewell, and pushed away to the ship, which layto off

the passage with her foreyard aback. Then the clamorous people pressed more closely around Probyn and

So far neither of them had spoken. Probyn, a tall, wiry, scantyhaired man, with quiet, deepset eyes, was

standing with one foot on the tierce of tobacco and his hands in his pockets. His wife glared defiantly at some

two or three score of reddishbrown women who crowded eagerly around her to stare into her face; holding

The deafening babble and frantic gesticulations were perfectly explicable to Probyn, and he apprehended no

danger. The head man of the village had not yet appeared, and until he came this wild license of behaviour

would continue. At last the natives became silent and parted to the right and left as Tahori, the head man, his

fat body shining with coconut oil, and carrying an ebonywood club in his hand, stood in front of the white

man and eyed him up and down. The scrutiny seemed satisfactory. He stretched out his huge, naked arm, and

shook Probyn's hand, uttering his one word of Samoan "Talofa!" and then, in his own dialect, he asked:

"Sam," replied Probyn. And then, in the Tokelau language, which the wildeyed people around him fairly

understood, "I have come here to live with you and trade for oil" and he pointed to the tierce of tobacco.

"Good!" grunted the fat man; "there are no twists in thy tongue; but why did the boat hasten away so

"They were frightened because of the noise. He with the face like a fowl's talked too much" and he

pointed to a long, hatchetvisaged native, who had been especially turbulent and vociferous.

"Ha!" and the fat, bearded face of Tahori turned from the white man to him of whom the white man had

spoken "is it thee, Makoi? And so thou madest the strangers hasten away! That was wrong. Only for thee I

Then he stooped and picked up one of Probyn's muskets, handed it to the white man, and silently indicated

the tall native with a nod. The other natives fell back. Niabong, Probyn's wife, set her boy on his feet, put her

hand in her bosom and drew out a key, with which she opened the chest. She threw back the lid, fixed her

"Good," said Probyn, and he motioned to his wife. She dived her hand into the chest and handed him a tin of

Slowly he loaded the musket, and Tahori, seizing the bondman by his arm, led him out to the open, and stood

Probyn knew his reputation depended on the shot. He raised his musket and fired. The ball passed through the

Probyn laid down the musket and motioned again to Niabong. She handed him a hatchet and blunt chisel.

Then, at a sign from him, a woman brought Niabong a shell of sweet toddy. The chief sat crosslegged and

watched Probyn opening the tierce of tobacco. Niabong locked the box again and sat upon it.

"Niabong. But my tongue twists with your talk here. I am of Naura (Pleasant Island). Byandby I shall

"E mo ," said the fat man, approvingly; "I can see it. Look you, he shall be as my brother, and thy child here

A young native girl slid out from the coconut grove at Tahori's bidding, and stood behind him holding a

"See, Tahori. I am a just man to thee because thou art a just man to me. Here is the price of him that thou

Tahori rose and beckoned to the people to return. "Look at this man. He is a truly great man. His heart

groweth from his loins upwards to his throat. Bring food to my house quickly, that he and his wife and child

may eat. And tomorrow shall every man cut wood for his house, a house that shall be in length six fathoms,

"OHO!" said Lagisiva, the widow, tossing her hair back over her shoulders, as she raised the heavy, fluted

tappa mallet in her thick, strong right hand, and dealt the rough cloth a series of quick strokes "Oho!" said

the darkfaced Lagisiva, looking up at the White Man, "because I be a woman dost think me a fool? I tell

thee I know some of the customs of the papalagi (the white foreigners). Much wisdom have ye in many

things; but again I tell thee, O friend of my sons, that in some other things the people of thy nation ay, of

all white nations, they be as the beasts of the forest the wild goat and pig without reason and without

shame. Tah! Has not my eldest son, Tui Fau, whom the white men call Bob, lived for seven years in Sini

(Sydney), when he returned from those places by New Guinea, where he was diver? And he has filled my

ears with the bad and shameless customs of the papalagi. Isa! I say again thy women have not the shame of

"Aue! Life is short; and, behold, this piece of siapo is for a wedding present, and I must hurry; but yet put

down thy gun and bag, and we shall smoke awhile, and thou shalt feel shame while I tell of one of the

"Isa!" and the big widow spat scornfully on the ground, "those are words words. It is the same; the same is

the blood, the same is the bone. Even in our heathen days we pointed the finger at one who looked with the

eye of love on the daughter of his father's brother or sister for such did we let his blood out upon the sand.

And I, old Lagisiva, have seen a white man brought to shame through this wickedness!"

"He was a foma'i (doctor), and rich, and came here because he desired to see strange places, and was weary

of his life in the land of the papalagi. So he remained with us, and hunted the wild boar with our young men,

and became strong and hardy, and like unto one of our people. And then, because he was for ever restless, he

sailed away once and returned in a small ship, and brought back trade and built a store and a fine house to

dwell in. The chief of this town gave him, for friendship, a piece of land over there by the Vaitamilo, and

thus did he become a still greater man. His store was full of rich goods, and he kept many servants, and at

nighttime his house was as a blaze of fire, for the young men and women would go there and sing and

"I, old Lagisiva, who am now fat and dull, was one. Oho, he was a man of plenty! Did a girl but look out

between her eyelashes at a piece of print in the store, lo! it was hers, even though it measured twenty fathoms

in length and print was a dollar a fathom in those days. So every girl even those from parts far off

cast herself in his way, that he might notice her. And he was generous to all alike in that alone was

"Once or twice every year the ships brought him letters. And he would count the marks on the paper, and tell

us that they came from a woman of the papalagi his cousin, as you would call her whose picture was

hung over his table. She was for ever smiling down upon us, and her eyes were his eyes, and if he but smiled

then were the two alike alike as are two children of the same birth. When three years had come and gone a

ship brought him a letter, and that night there were many of us at his house, men and women, to talk with the

people from the ship. When those had gone away to their sleep, he called to the chief, and said:

"'In two days, O my friend, I set out for my land again; but to return, for much do I desire to remain with you

always. In six months I shall be here again. And there is one thing I would speak of. I shall bring back a white

"Then Tamaali'i, the chief, who was my father's father, and very old, said, 'She shall be my daughter, and

welcome,' and many of us young girls said also, 'She shall be welcome' although we felt sorrowful to lose

a lover so good and openhanded. And then did the foma'i call to the old chief and two others, and they

entered the store and lighted lamps, and presently a man went forth into the village, and cried aloud: 'Come

hither, all people, and listen!' So, many hundreds came, and we all went in and found the floor covered with

"'Behold, my people, this our good friend goeth away to his own country that he may bring back a wife. And

because many young unmarried girls will say, "Why does he leave us? Are not we as good to look upon as

this other woman?" does he put these presents here on the ground and these words into my mouth "Out of

his love to you, which must be a thing that is past and forgotten, the wife that is coming must not know of

"And then every girl that had a wish took whatever she fancied, and the white man charged us to say naught

"One hundred and ten fat hogs killed we and roasted whole for the feast of welcome. I swear it by the Holy

Ones of God's Kingdom one hundred and ten. And yet this white lily of his never smiled not even on

us young girls who danced and sang before her, only she clung to his arm, and, behold, when we drew close

"And then one by one all those that had gathered to do him honour went away in shame shame that he

should do this, wed his own sister, and many women said worse of her. But yet the feast the hogs, and

yams, and taro, and fish, and fowls was brought and placed by his doorstep, but no one spake, and at

nighttime he was alone with his wife, till he sent for the old chief, and reproached him with bitter words for

"And the old man pointed to the picture over the table, and said: 'Is this she thy wife?'

"So, for many months, these two lived. He found some to work for him, and some young girls to tend his

sister, whom he called his wife, whilst she lay ill with her first child. And the day after it was born, some one

whispered: 'He is accursed! the child cries not it is dumb.' For a week it lived, yet never did it cry, for the

curse of wickedness was upon it. Then the white man nursed her tenderly, and took her away to live in Fiji

for six months. When they came back it was the same no one cared to go inside his house, and he cursed

us, and said he would bring men from Tokelau to work for him. We said naught. Then in time another child

"Now, there was a girl amongst us whose name was Suni, to whom the white woman spoke much, for she

was learning our tongue, and Suni, by reason of the white woman's many presents, spoke openly to her, and

told her of the village talk. Then the white woman wept, and arose and spoke to the man for a long while.

And she came back to Suni, and said: 'What thou hast told me was in my own heart three years ago; yet,

because it is the custom of my people, I married this man, who is the son of my father's brother. But now I

shall go away.' Then the white man came out and beat Suni with a stick. But yet was his sister, whom he

called his wife, eaten up with shame, and when a ship came they went away, and we saw her not again. For

about two years we heard no more of our white man, till he returned and said the woman was dead. And he

took Suni for wife, who bore him three children, and then they went away to some other country I know

"I thank thee many, many times, O friend of my sons. Four children of mine here live in this village, yet not a

one of them ever asketh me when I last smoked. May God walk with thee always for this stick of tobacco."

THREE years ago, in an Australian paper, I read something that set me thinking of Taplin of Taplin and

"News has reached Tahiti that a steamer had arrived at Toulon with two noted prisoners on board. These men,

who are brothers named Rorique, long ago left Tahiti on an islandtrading trip, and when the vessel got to

sea they murdered the captain, a passenger, the supercargo (Mr Gibson, of Sydney), and two sailors, and

threw their bodies overboard. The movers in the affair were arrested at Ponape, in the Caroline Islands. The

vessel belonged to a Tahitian prince, and was called the Nuroahiti, but its name had been changed after the

tragedy. The accused persons were sent to Manilla. From Manilla they appear now to have been sent on to

In the year 1872 we were lying inside Funafuti Lagoon, in the Ellice Group. The last cask of oil had been

towed off to the brig and placed under hatches, and we were to sail in the morning for our usual cruise among

Our captain, a white trader from the shore, and myself, were sitting on deck "yarning" and smoking. We lay

about a quarter of a mile from the beach such a beach, white as the driven snow, and sweeping in a great

curve for five long miles to the north and a lesser distance to the south and west. Right abreast of the brig,

nestling like huge birds' nests in the shade of groves of coconut and breadfruit trees, were the houses of the

Presently the skipper picked up his glasses that lay beside him on the skylight, and looked away down to

leeward, where the white sails of a schooner beating up to the anchorage were outlined against the line of

palms that fringed the beach of Funafala the westernmost island that forms one of the chain enclosing

"It's Taplin's schooner, right enough," he said. "Let us go ashore and give him and his pretty wife a hand to

Taplin was the name of the only other white trader on Funafuti besides old Tom Humphreys, our own man.

He had been two years on the island, and was trading in opposition to our trader, as agent for a foreign house

our owners were Sydney people but his firm's unscrupulous method of doing business had disgusted

him. So one day he told the supercargo of their vessel that he would trade for them no longer than the exact

time he had agreed upon two years. He had come to Funafuti from the Pelews, and was now awaiting the

return of his firm's vessel to take him back there again. Getting into our boat we were pulled ashore and

"Well, Taplin, here's your schooner at last," said old Tom, as we shook hands and seated ourselves in the

Taplin was a man of about thirty or so, with a quiet, impassive face, and dark, deepset eyes that gave to his

features a somewhat gloomy look, except when he smiled, which was not often. Men with that curious,

faroff look in their eyes are not uncommon among the lonely islands of the wide Pacific. Sometimes it

comes to a man with long, long years of wandering to and fro; and you will see it deepen when, by some idle,

chance word, you move the memories of a forgotten past ere he had even dreamed of the existence of the

South Sea Islands and for ever dissevered himself from all links and associations of the outside world.

"Yes," he answered, "I am nearly ready. I saw the schooner at daylight, and knew it was the Alida."

"Back to the Carolines. Nerida belongs down that way, you know; and she is fretting to get back again

otherwise I wouldn't leave this island. I've done pretty well here, although the people I trade for are well,

"Aye," assented old Humphreys, "there isn't one of 'em but what is the two ends and bight of a scoundrel;

and that supercargo with the yaller moustache and womany hands is the worst of the lot. I wonder if he's

aboard this trip? I don't let him inside my house; I've got too many daughters, and they all think him a fine

Nerida, Taplin's wife, came out to us from an inner room. She was a native of one of the Pelew Islands, a tall,

slenderlybuilt girl, with pale, olive skin and big, soft eyes. A flowing gown of yellow muslin the

favourite colour of the Portugueseblooded natives of the Pelews buttoned high up to her throat, draped

her graceful figure. After putting her little hand in ours, and greeting us in the Funafuti dialect, she went over

to Taplin, and touching his arm, pointed out the schooner that was now only a mile or so away, and a smile

"L," said Warren, "can't we do something for Taplin ourselves? Isn't there a station anywhere about

"Would he come, Warren? He or, rather, that pretty wife of his seems bent upon going away in the

"Aye," said the skipper, "that's it. If it were any other vessel I wouldn't care." Then suddenly:

"That fellow Motley (the supercargo) is a damned scoundrel capable of any villainy where a woman is

I had heard the story very often. By means of a forged letter purporting to have been written by her father

an old English trader in the Gambier Group Motley had lured the beautiful young halfblood away from a

school in San Francisco, and six months afterwards turned her adrift on the streets of Honolulu. Raymond

was a lonely man, and passionately attached to his only child; so no one wondered when, reaching California

"I will ask him, anyway," I said; and as we went back into the house the Alida shot past our line of vision

"Taplin," I said, "would you care about taking one of our stations to the eastward? Name any island you

"Thank you. I would be only too glad, but I cannot. I have promised Nerida to go back to Babelthouap, or

somewhere in the Pelews, and Motley has promised to land us at Ponape, in the Carolines. We can get away

"I am very sorry, Taplin" I began, when old Captain Warren burst in with "Look here, Taplin, we

haven't got much time to talk. Here's the Alida's boat coming, with that (blank blank) scoundrel Motley in it.

Take my advice. Don't go away in the Alida." And then he looked at Nerida, and whispered something.

"I know," he answered, "he's a most infernal villain Nerida hates him too. But you see how I am fixed.

The Alida is our only chance of getting back to the northwest. But he hasn't got old Raymond to deal with in

Motley came in first, hat and fan in hand. He was a finelooking man, with blue eyes and an unusually fair

skin for an island supercargo, with a long, drooping, yellow moustache. Riedermann, the skipper, who

"How are you, gentlemen?" said Motley affably, turning from Taplin and his wife, and advancing towards us.

"Captain Riedermann and I saw the spars of your brig showing up over the coconuts yesterday, and therefore

Warren looked steadily at him for a moment, and then glanced at his outstretched hand.

"The pleasure isn't mutual, blarst you, Mr Motley," he said coldly, and he put his hand in his pocket.

The supercargo took a step nearer to him with a savage glare in his blue eyes. "What do you mean by this,

"Mean?" and the imperturbable Warren seated himself on a corner of the table, and gazed stolidly first at the

handsome Motley and then at the heavy, vicious features of Riedermann. "Oh, anything you like. Perhaps it's

because it's not pleasant to see white men landing at a quiet island like this with revolvers slung to their

waists under their pyjamas; looks a bit too much like Bully Hayes' style for me," and then his tone of cool

banter suddenly changed to that of studied insolence. "I say, Motley, I was talking about you just now to

Taplin and Nerida. Do you want to know what I was saying? Perhaps I had better tell you. I was talking about

Motley put his right hand under his pyjama jacket, but Taplin sprang forward, seized his wrist in a grip of

"The man who draws a pistol in my house, Mr Motley, does a foolish thing," he said, in quiet, contemptuous

With set teeth and clenched hands Motley flung himself into a chair, unable to speak.

Warren, still seated on the table, swung his foot nonchalantly to and fro, and then began at Riedermann.

"Why, how's this, Captain Ricdermann? Don't you back up your supercargo's little quarrels, or have you left

your pistoL on board? Ah, no, you haven't. I can see it there right enough. Modesty forbids you putting a

bullet into a man in the presence of a lady, eh?" Then slewing round again, he addressed Motley: "By God!

sir, it is well for you that we are in a white man's house, and that that man is my friend and took away that

pistol from your treacherous hand. If you had fired at me I would have booted you from one end of Funafuti

beach to the other and I've a damned good mind to do it now, but won't, as Taplin has to do some business

"That will do, Warren," I said. "We don't want to make a scene in Taplin's house. Let us go away and allow

Still glaring angrily at Riedermann and Motley, Warren got down slowly from the table. Then we bade Taplin

At daylight we saw Taplin and his wife go off in the Alida's boat. They waved their hands to us in farewell as

the boat pulled past the brig, and then the schooner hoveup anchor, and with all sail set, stood away down to

A year or so afterward we were on a trading voyage to the islands of the Tubuai Group, and were lying

becalmed, in company with a New Bedford whaler. Her skipper came on board the brig, and we started

"Didn't you hear?" he said. "The Alida never showed up again. 'Turned turtle,' I suppose, somewhere in the

islands, like all those slashing, overmasted, 'Friscobuilt schooners do, sooner or later."

Five years had passed. Honest old Warren, fierytempered and truehearted, had long since died of fever in

the Solomons, and I was supercargo with a smart young American skipper in the brigantine Palestine, when

we one day sailed along the weatherside of a tiny little atoll in the Caroline Islands.

The Palestine was leaking, and Packenham, tempted by the easy passage into the beautiful lagoon, decided to

The island had but very few inhabitants perhaps ten or twelve men and double that number of women and

children. No ship, they told us, had ever entered the lagoon but Bully Hayes' brig, and that was nine years

before. There was nothing on the island to tempt a trading vessel, and even the sperm whalers, as they

lumbered lazily past from Strong's Island to Guam, would not bother to lower a boat and "dicker" for

At the time of Hayes' visit the people were in sore straits, and on the brink of actual starvation, for although

there were fish and turtle in plenty, they had not the strength to catch them. A few months before, a cyclone

had destroyed nearly all the coconut trees, and an epidemic followed it, and carried off half the scanty

The jaunty searover than whom a kinderhearted man to natives never sailed the South Seas took

pity on the survivors, especially the youngest and prettiest girls, and gave them a passage in the famous

Leonora to another island where food was plentiful. There they remained for some years, till the inevitable

mal du pays that is inborn to every Polynesian and Micronesian, became too strong to be resisted; and so one

But in their absence strangers had come to the island. As the people landed from the boats of the whaleship,

two brown men, a woman, and a child, came out of one of the houses, and gazed at them. Then they fled to

Some weeks passed before the returned islanders found out the retreat of the strangers, who were armed with

rifles, and called them to "come out and be friends." They did so, and by some subtle treachery the two men

The woman, who was young and handsome, was spared, and, from what we could learn, had been well

That they could not tell us. But the woman had since told them that the ship had anchored in the lagoon

because she was leaking badly, and that the captain and crew were trying to stop the leak when she began to

heel over, and they had barely time to save a few things when she sank. In a few days the captain and crew

left the island in the boat, and, rather than face the dangers of a long voyage in such a small boat, the two

"That's a mighty fishy yarn," said Packenham to me. "I daresay these fellows have been doing a little

cuttingoff business. But then I don't know of any missing vessel. We'll go ashore tomorrow and have a

A little after sunset the skipper and I were leaning over the rail, watching the figures of the natives, as they

moved to and fro in the glare of the fires lighted here and there along the beach.

"Hallo!" said Packenham, "here's a canoe coming, with only a woman in it. By thunder! she's travelling, too,

A few minutes more and the canoe was alongside. The woman hastily picked up a little girl that was sitting in

A native sailor leant over the bulwarks and lifted up the child, and the woman clambered after her. Then,

She was standing facing us as we followed and entered, holding the child tightly to her bosom. The soft light

of the cabin lamp fell full upon her features, and we saw that she was very young, and seemed wildly excited.

"Who are you?" we said, when she advanced, put out a trembling hand to us, and said: "Don't you know me,

Mr Supercargo? I am Nerida, Taplin's wife." Then she sank on a seat and sobbed violently.

We waited till she regained her composure somewhat, and then I said: "Nerida, where is Taplin?"

"Dead," she said in a voice scarce above a whisper; "only us two are left I and little Teresa."

Packenham held out his hands to the child. With wondering, timid eyes, she came, and for a moment or two

looked doubtingly upwards into the brown, handsome face of the skipper, and then nestled beside him.

For a minute or so the ticking of the cabin clock broke the silence, ere I ventured to ask the one question

"My husband was murdered at sea," she said and then she covered her face with her hands.

"Don't ask her any more now," said Packenham pityingly; "let her tell us tomorrow."

She raised her face. "Yes, I will tell you tomorrow. You will take me away with you, will you not,

"Of course," said the captain promptly. And he stretched out his honest hand to her.

"She's a wonderfully pretty woman," said Packenham, as we walked the poop later on, and he glanced down

through the open skylight to where she and the child slept peacefully on the cushioned transoms. "How

prettily she speaks English, too. Do you think she was fond of her husband, or was it merely excitement that

made her cry? native women are as prone to be as hysterical as our own when under any violent emotion."

"I can only tell you, Packenham, that when I saw her last, five years ago, she was a graceful girl of eighteen,

and as full of happiness as a bird is of song. She looks thirty now, and her face is thin and drawn but I

Next morning Nerida had an hour or two among the prints and muslin in the traderoom, and there was

something of the old beauty about her when she sat down to breakfast with us. We were to sail at noon. The

"Nerida," I inquired unthinkingly, "do you know what became of the Alida? She never turned up again."

"Yes," she answered; "she is here, at the bottom of the lagoon. Will you come and look at her?"

After breakfast we lowered the dingy, the captain and I pulling. Nerida steered us out to the north end of the

lagoon till we reached a spot where the water suddenly deepened. It was, in fact, a deep pool, some three or

four hundred feet in diameter, closed in by a continuous wall of coral rock, the top of which, even at low

She held up her hands for us to back water, then she gazed over the side into the water.

We bent over the side of the boat. The waters of the lagoon were as smooth as glass and as clear. We saw two

slender rounded columns that seemed to shoot up in a slanting direction from out the vague, blue depths

beneath, to within four or five fathoms of the surface of the water. Swarms of gorgeouslyhued fish swam

and circled in and about the masses of scarlet and golden weed that clothed the columns from their tops

A hawkbill turtle, huge, black, and misshapen, slid out from beneath the dark ledge of the reef, and swam

That night, as the Palestine sped noiselessly before the trade wind to the westward she told me, in the old

"The schooner," she said, "sailed very quickly, for on the fifteenth day out from Funafuti we saw the faroff

peaks of Strong's Island. I was glad, for Kusaie is not many days' sail from Ponape and I hated to be on

the ship. The man with the blue eyes filled me with fear when he looked at me; and he and the captain and

"There were five native sailors on board two were countrymen of mine, and three were Tafitos.

"One night we were close to a little island called Mokil, and Taplin and I were awakened by a loud cry on

deck; my two countrymen were calling on him to help them. He sprang on deck, pistol in hand, and, behold!

the schooner was laid to the wind with the land close to, and the boat alongside, and the three white men were

"'Help us, O friend!' they called to my husband in their own tongue; 'the white men say that if we go not

ashore here at Mokil they will kill us. Help us for they mean evil to thee and Nerida. He with the yellow

"There were quick, fierce words, and then my husband struck Motley on the head with his pistol and felled

him, and then pointed it at the mate and the captain, and made them untie the men, and called to the two

"His face was white with the rage that burned in him, and all that night he walked to and fro and let me sleep

"'Tomorrow,' he said, 'I will make this captain land us on Mokil;' it was for that he would not let the sailors

"At dawn I slept soundly. Then I awoke with a cry of fear, for I heard a shot, and then a groan, and my

husband fell across me, and the blood poured out of his mouth and ran down my arms and neck. I struggled to

rise, and he tried to draw his pistol, but the man with yellow hair and blue eyes, who stood over him, stabbed

him twice in the back. Then the captain and mate seized him by the arms and lifted him up. As his head fell

She ceased, and leant her cheek against the face of the little girl, who looked in childish wonder at the tears

"They cast him over into the sea with life yet in him, and ere he sank, Motley (that devil with the blue eyes)

stood with one foot on the rail and fired another shot, and laughed when he saw the bullet strike. Then he and

"'Let us finish these Pelew men, ere mischief come of it,' said Riedermann, the captain.

"But the others dissuaded him. There was time enough, they said, to kill them. And if they killed them now,

there would be but three sailors to work the ship. And Motley looked at me and laughed, and said he, for one,

"Then they all trooped below, and took me with them me, with my husband's blood not yet dried on my

hands and bosom. They made me get liquor for them to drink, and they drank and laughed, and Motley put

his bloodied hand around my waist and kissed me, and the others laughed still more.

"In a little while Riedermann and the mate were so drunken that no words came from them, and they fell on

the cabin floor. Then Motley, who could stand, but staggered as he walked, came and sat beside me and

kissed me again, and said he had always loved me; but I pointed to the blood of my husband that stained my

skin and clotted my hair together, and besought him to first let me wash it away.

"'Nay,' said I, 'see my hair. Let me then go on deck, and I can pour water over my head.'

"But he held my hand tightly as we came up, and my heart died within me; for it was in my mind to spring

"He called to one of the Tafito men to bring water, but none came; for they, too, were drunken with liquor

they had stolen from the hold, where there was plenty in red cases and white cases gin and brandy. "But

my two countrymen were sober; one of them steered the ship, and the other stood beside him with an axe in

"'Get some water,' said Motley, to Juan he who held the axe; and as he brought it, he said, 'How is it,

tattooed dog, that thou art so slow to move?' and he struck him in the teeth, and as he struck he fell.

"Ah! that was my time! Ere he could rise I sprang at him, and Juan raised the axe and struck off his right foot;

and then Liro, the man who steered, handed me his knife. It was a sharp knife, and I stabbed him, even as he

had stabbed my husband, till my arm was tired, and all my hate of him had died away in my heart.

"There was quick work then. My two countrymen went below into the cabin and took Motley's pistol from

"Guk! He was a fat, heavy man, that Riedermann, the captain; the three of us could scarce drag him up on

"Then Juan and Liro talked, and said: 'Now for these Tafito men; they, too, must die.' They brought up rifles,

and went to the forepart of the schooner, where the Tafito men lay in a drunken sleep, and shot them dead.

"In two more days we saw land the island we have left but now, and because that there were no people

living there only empty houses could we see Juan and Liro sailed the schooner into the lagoon.

"We took such things on shore as we needed, and then Juan and Liro cut away the topmasts and towed the

schooner to the deep pool, where they made holes in her, so that she sank, away out of the sight of men.

"Juan and Liro were kind to me, and when my child was born, five months after we landed, they cared for me

"Only two ships did we ever see, but they passed faroff like clouds upon the searim; and we thought to live

and die there by ourselves. Then there came a ship, bringing back the people who had once lived there. They

killed Juan and Liro, but let me and the child live. The rest I have told you. . . . How is this captain named? . .

We landed Nerida at Yap, in the Western Carolines. A year afterwards, when I left the Palestine, I heard that

Packenham had given up the sea, was trading in the Pelew Group, and was permanently married, and that his

ALONE, in the most solitary part of the Eastern Pacific, midway between the earthquakeshaken littoral of

Chili and Peru, and the thousand palmclad islets of the Low Archipelago, lies an island of the days "when

the world was young." By the lithelimbed, softeyed descendants of the forgotten and mysterious race that

once quickened the land, this lonely outlier of the isles of the Southern Seas is called in their soft tongue

A hundred and seventy years ago Roggewein, on the dawn of an Easter Sunday, discerned through the misty,

tropic haze the grey outlines of an island under his lee beam, and sailed down upon it.

He landed, and even as the grim and hardy old navigator gazed upon and wondered at the mysteries of the

strange island, so this day do the cunning men of science, who, perhaps once in thirty years, go thither in the

vain effort to read the secret of an allbutperished race. And they can tell us but vaguely that the stupendous

existing evidences of past glories are of immense and untold age, and show their designers to have been

coeval with the builders of the buried cities of Mexico and Peru; beyond that, they can tell us nothing.

Who can solve the problem? What manner of an island king was he who ruled the builders of the great

terraced platforms of stone, the carvers of the huge blocks of lava, the hewersout with rudest tools of the

Sphinxlike images of trachyte, whose square, massive, and disdainful faces have for unnumbered centuries

And the people of Rapanui of today? you may ask. Search the whole Pacific from Pylstaart, the

southern sentinel of the Friendlies, to the onetime buccaneerhaunted, faraway Pelews; thence eastward

through the whitebeached coral atolls of the Carolines and Marshalls, and southwards to the cloudcapped

Marquesas and the sandy stretches of the Paumotu and you will find no handsomer men or more graceful

Yet are they but the survivors of a race doomed doomed from the day that Roggewein in his clumsy,

highpooped frigate first saw their land, and marvelled at the imperishable relics of a dead greatness. With

smiling faces they welcomed him a stranger from an unknown, outside world, with cutlass at waist and

pistol in hand as a god; he left them a legacy of civilisation a hideous and cruel disease that swept

through the amiable and unsuspicious race as an epidemic, and slew its thousands, and scaled with the hand

of Death and Silence the eager life that had then filled the square houses of lava in many a town from the

Ask of the people now, "Whence came ye? and whose were the hands that fashioned these mighty images

and carved upon these stones?" and in their simple manner they will answer, "From Rapa, under the setting

sun, came our fathers; and we were then a great people, even as the oneone of the beach. . . . Our Great King

was it, he whose name is forgotten by us, that caused these temples and cemeteries and terraces to be built;

and it was in his time that the forgotten fathers of our fathers carved from out of the stone of the quarries of

Terano Kau the great Silent Faces that gaze for ever upward to the sky. . . . Aiaah! . . . But it was long ago.

. . . Ah! a great people were we then in those days, and the wild people to the West called us Te tagata te pito

henua (the people who live at the end of the world) . . . . and we know no more."

A SOFT, cool morning in November, 187. Between Ducie and Pitcairn Islands two American whaleships

cruise lazily along to the gentle breath of the southeast trades, when the lookout from both vessels see a

third sail bearing down upon them. In a few hours she is close enough to be recognised as one of the luckiest

Within a quarter of mile of the two ships the Nassau and the Dagget the newcomer backs her foreyard

and hauls up her mainsail. A cheer rises from the ships. She wants to "gam," i.e. to gossip. With eager hands

four boats are lowered from the two ships, and the captains and second mates of each are soon racing for the

The skipper of the brig, after shaking hands with his visitors and making the usual inquiries as to their luck,

number of days out from New Bedford, etc., led the way to his cabin, and, calling his Portuguese steward,

had liquor and a box of cigars brought out. The captain of the Pocahontas was a little, witheredup old man

with sharp, deepset eyes of brightest blue, and had the reputation of possessing the most fiery and excitable

temper of any of the captains of the sixty or seventy American whaleships that in those days cruised the

After drinking some of his potent New England rum with his visitors, and having answered all their queries,

the master of the Pocahontas inquired if they had seen anything of a Chilian manofwar further to the

"Then just settle down, gentlemen, for awhile, and I'll tell you one of the curiousest things that I ever saw or

heard of. I've logged partiklars of the whole business, and when I get to Oahu (Honolulu) I mean to narrate

just all I do know to Father Damon of the Honolulu Friend. Thar's nothing like a newspaper fur showin' a

man up when he's been up to any onnatural villainy, and thinks no one will ever know anything about it. So

Ten days previously, when close in to barren and isolated SalayGomez, the Pocahontas had spoken the

Chilian corvette O'Higgins, bound from Easter Island to Valparaiso. The captain of the corvette entertained

the American master courteously, and explained his ship's presence so far to the eastward, by stating that the

Government had instructed him to call at Easter Island, and pick up an Englishman in the Chilian service,

who had been sent there to examine and report on the colossal statues and mysterious terraces of that lonely

island. The Englishman, as Commander Gallegos said, was a valued servant of the Republic, and had for

some years served in its Navy as a surgeon on board El Almirante Cochrane, the flagship. He had left

Valparaiso in the whaleship Comboy with the intention of remaining three months on the island. At the end

of that time a war vessel was to call and convey him back to Chili. But in less than two months the Republic

was in the throes of a deadly struggle with Peru here the commander of the O'Higgins bowed to the

American captain, and, pointing to a huge scar that traversed his bronzed face from temple to chin, said, "in

which I had the honour to receive this, and promotion" and nearly two years had elapsed ere the

Government had time to think again of the English scientist and his mission. Peace restored, the O'Higgins

was ordered to proceed to the island and bring him back; and as the character of the natives was not well

known, and it was feared he might have been killed, Commander Gallegos was instructed to execute

But, the Chilian officer said, on reaching the island he had found the natives to be very peaceable and

inoffensive, and, although much alarmed at the appearance of his armed landing party from the corvette, they

had given him a letter from the Englishman, and had satisfied him that Dr Francis had remained with

them for some twelve months only, and had then left the island in a passing whaleship, and Commander

Gallegos, making them suitable presents, bade them goodbye, and steamed away to Valparaiso.

This was all the polite little commander had to say, and, after a farewell glass of wine, his visitor rose to go,

when the captain of the corvette casually inquired if the Pocahontas was likely to call at the island.

"I ask you," he said in his perfect English, "because one of my ship's company deserted there. You, seor,

may possibly meet with him there. Yet he is of no value, and he is no sailor, and but a lad. He was very ill

most of the time, and this was his first voyage. I took him ashore with me in my boat, as he besought me

eagerly to do so, and the little devil ran away and hid, or was hidden by the natives."

"That was easy enough, but" and the commander raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders "of

what use? He was no use to the corvette. Better for him to stay there, and perhaps recover, than to die on

board the O'Higgins and be thrown to the blue sharks. Possibly, seor, you may find him well, and it may suit

you to take him to your good ship, and teach him the business of catching the whale. My trade is to show my

Then the two captains bade each other farewell, and in another hour the redoubtable O'Higgins, with a black

trail of smoke streaming astern, was ten miles away on her course to Valparaiso.

A week after the Pocahontas lay becalmed close in to the lee side of Rapanui, and within sight of the houses

of the principal village. The captain, always ready to get a "green" hand, was thinking of the chances of his

securing the Chilian deserter, and decided to lower a boat and try. Taking four men with him, he pulled

Some sixty or seventy natives clustered round the boat as she touched the shore. With smiling faces and

outstretched hands they surrounded the captain, and pressed upon him their simple gifts of ripe bananas and

fish baked in leaves, begging him to first eat a little and then walk with them to Mataveri, their largest

village, distant a mile, where preparations were being made to welcome him formally. The skipper, nothing

loth, bade his crew not to go too far away in their rambles, and, accompanied by his boatsteerer, was about to

set off with the natives, when he remembered the object of his visit, and asked a big, wellmade woman, the

only native present that could speak English, "Where is the man you hid from the manofwar?"

There was a dead silence, and for nearly half a minute no one spoke. The keen blue eyes of the American

looked from one face to another inquiringly, and then settled on the fat, goodnatured features of Varua, the

Holding her hands, palms upwards, to the captain, she endeavoured to speak, and then, to his astonishment,

he saw that her dark eyes were filled with tears. And then, as if moved with some sudden and sorrowful

emotion, a number of other women and young girls, murmuring softly in pitying tones, "E mat ! E mat !"

came to his side, and held their hands out to him with the same supplicating gesture.

The captain was puzzled. For all his island wanderings and cruises he had no knowledge of any Polynesian

dialect, and the tearful muteness of the fat Varua was still unbroken. At last she placed one hand on his

sleeve, and, pointing landward with the other, said, in her gentle voice, "Come," and taking his hand in hers,

For about half a mile they walked behind the captain and his boatsteerer and the woman Varua without

uttering a word. Presently Varua stopped, and called out the name of "Taku" in a low voice.

A fine, handsome native, partly clothed in European sailor's dress, stepped apart from the others and came to

Turning to the captain, she said, "This is Taku the Sailor. He can speak a little English and much Spanish. I

Although not understanding the relevancy of her remark, the captain nodded, and then with gentle insistence

A few minutes more, and they were at the foot of one of the massivestoned and ancient papaku, or

cemeteries, on the walls of which were a number of huge images carved from trachyte, and representing the

trunk of the human body. Some of the figures bore on their heads crowns of red tufa, and the aspect of all was

towards the ocean. At the foot of the wall of the papaku were a number of prone figures, with hands and arms

About a cable length from the wall stood two stone houses memorials of the olden time and it was to

these that Varua and the two white men, attended now by women only, directed their steps.

The strange, unearthly stillness of the place, the low whispers of the women, the array of colossal figures with

sphinxlike faces set to the sea, and the unutterable air of sadness that enwrapped the whole scene, overawed

even the unimaginative mind of the rough whaling captain, and he experienced a curious feeling of relief

when his gentlevoiced guide entered through the open doorway the largest of the two houses, and, in a

A delightful sense of coolness was his first sensation on entering, and then with noiseless step the other

Still clasping his hand, Varua led him to the farther end of the house, and pointed to a motionless figure that

lay on a couch of mats, covered with a large piece of navyblue calico. At each side of the couch sat a young

native girl, and their dark, luminous eyes, shining starlike from out the wealth of black, glossy hair that fell

upon their bronzed shoulders, turned wonderingly upon the stranger who had broken in upon their watch.

Motioning the girls aside, Varua released her hold of the white man's hand and drew the cloth from off the

figure, and the seaman's pitying glance fell upon the pale, sweet features of a young white girl.

But for the unmistakable pallid hue of death he thought at first that she slept. In the thin, delicate hands,

crossed upon her bosom, there was placed, after the manner of those of her faith, a small metal crucifix. Her

hair, silky and jet black, was short like a man's, and the exquisitelymodelled features, which even the

coldness of death had not robbed of their beauty, showed the Spanish blood that, but a few hours before, had

Slowly the old seaman drew the covering over the still features, and, with an unusual emotion stirring his

rude nature, he rose, and, followed by Varua, walked outside and sat upon a broken pillar of lava that lay

Calling his boatsteerer, he ordered him to return to the beach and go off to the ship with instructions to the

mate to have a coffin made as quickly as possible and send it ashore; and then, at a glance from Varua, who

smiled a grave approval as she listened to his orders, he followed her and the man she called Taku into the

Round about the inside walls of this ancient dwelling of a forgotten race were placed a number of seamen's

chests made of cedar and camphor wood the lares and penates of most Polynesian houses. The gravelled

Seating herself, with Taku the Sailor, on the mats, Varua motioned the captain to one of the boxes, and then

told him a tale that moved him rough, fierce, and tyrannical as was his nature to the deepest pity.

"It is not yet twenty days since the fighting pahi afi (steamer) came here, and we of Mataveri saw the boat full

of armed men land on the beach at Hagaroa. Filled with fear were we; but yet as we had done no wrong we

stood on the beach to welcome. And, ere the armed men had left the boat, we knew them to be the Sipaniola

from Chili the same as those that came here ten years ago in three ships, and seized and bound three

hundred and six of our men, and carried them away for slaves to the land of the Tae Manu, and of whom

(She spoke of the cruel outrage of 1862, when three Peruvian slaveships took away over three hundred

"The chief of the ship was a little man, and he called out to us in the tongue of Chili, 'Have no fear,' and took

a little gun from out its case of skin that hung by his side, and giving it to a man in the boat, stepped over to

"Now, this man here, Taku the Sailor, speaketh the tongue of Chili, but he feared to tell it, lest they might

"Then I, who for six years dwelt with English people at Tahiti, was pushed forward by those behind me and

made to talk in English; and lo! the little man spoke in your tongue even as quick as he did in that of Chili.

"Now this Farani was a young white man of Peretania (England), big and strong. He came to us a year and a

half ago. He was rich, and had with him chests filled with presents for us of Rapanui; and he told us that he

came to live a while among us, and look upon the houses of stone and the Faces of the Silent that gaze out

upon the sea. For a year he dwelt with us and became as one of ourselves, and we loved him; and then,

because no ship came, he began to weary and be sad. At last a ship like thine, one that hunts for the whale

came, and Farani called us together, and placed a letter in the hands of the chief at Mataveri, and said: 'If

it so be that a ship cometh from Chili, give these my words to the captain, and all will be well.' Then he bade

"All this I said in quick words, and then we gave to the little fighting chief the letter Farani had written. When

he had counted the words in the letter, he said: 'Bueno, it is well,' and called to his men, and they brought out

many gifts for us from the boat cloth, and garments for men and women, and two great bags of canvas

filled with tobacco. Aiaah! many presents he gave us this because of the good words Farani had set

down in the letter. Then the little chief said to me, 'Let these my men walk where they list, and I will go with

"So the sailors came out of the boats carrying their guns and swords in their hands, but the little chief, whose

avagutu (moustache) stuck out on each side of his face like the wings of a flyingfish when it leaps in terror

from the mouth of the hungry bonito, spoke angrily, and they laid their guns and swords back in the boats.

"So the sailors went hither and thither with our young men and girls; and, although at that time I knew it not,

"Then I, and Taku the Sailor, and the little seachief came to the houses of Mataveri, and he stayed awhile

and spoke good words to us. And we, although we fear the men of Chili for the wrong they once did us, were

"As we talked, there came inside the house a young girl named Temeteri, whom, when Farani had been with

us for two months, he had taken for wife; and she bore him a son. But from the day that he had sailed away

she became sick with grief; and when, after many months, she told me that Farani had said he would return to

her, my heart was heavy, for I know the ways of white men with us women of brown skins. Yet I feared to

tell her he lied and would return no more. Now, this girl Temeteri was sought after by a man named Huarani,

the son of Heremai, who desired to marry her now that Farani had gone, and he urged her to question the

"So I spoke of Temeteri. He laughed and shook his head, and said: 'Nay, Farani the Englishman will return no

more; but yet one so beautiful as she,' and he pointed to Temeteri, 'should have many lovers and know no

grief. Let her marry again and forget him, and this is my marriage gift to her,' and he threw a big golden coin

"She took it in her hand and threw it far out through the doorway with bitter words, and rose and went away

"Then the little captain went back to the boat and called his men to him, and lo! one was gone. Ah! he was

angry, and a great scar that ran down one side of his face grew red with rage. But soon he laughed, and said

to us: 'See, there be one of my people hidden away from me. Yet he is but a boy, and sick; and I care not to

stay and search for him. Let him be thy care so that he wanders not away and perishes among the broken

lava; he will be in good hands among the people of Rapanui.' With that he bade us farewell, and in but a

"All that day and the next we searched, but found not him who had hidden away; but in the night of the

second day, when it rained heavily, and Taku (who is my brother's son) and I and my two children worked at

the making of a kupega (net), he whom we had sought came to the door. And as we looked our hearts were

filled with pity, for, as he put out his hands to us, he staggered and fell to the ground.

"So Taku who is a man of a good heart and I lifted him up and carried him to a bed of soft mats, and as

I placed my hand on his bosom to see if he was dead, lo! it was soft as a woman's, and I saw that the stranger

"I took from her the wet garments and brought warm clothes of mamoe (blankets), and Taku made a great

fire, and we rubbed her cold body and her hands and feet till her life came back to her again, and she sat up

and ate a little beatenup taro. When the night and the dawn touched she slept again.

"The sun was high when the white girl awoke, and fear leapt into her eyes when she saw the house filled with

people who came to question Taku and me about the stranger. With them came the girl Temeteri, whose head

"I went to the strange girl, put my arm around her, and spoke, but though she smiled and answered in a little

voice, I understood her not, for I know none of the tongue of Chili. But yet she leaned her head against my

bosom, and her eyes that were as big and bright as Fetuaho, the star of the morning, looked up into mine and

"There was a creat buzzing of talk among the women. Some came to her and touched her hands and forehead,

and said: 'Let thy trembling cease; we of Rapanui will be kind to the white girl.'

"And as the people thronged about her and talked, she shook her head and her eyes sought mine, and hot tears

splashed upon my hand. Then the mother of Temeteri raised her voice and called to Taku the Sailor, and said:

'O Taku, thou who knowest her tongue, ask her of Farani, my white son, the husband of my daughter.'

"The young girls in the house laughed scornfully at old Poh re, for some of them had loved Farani, who yet

had put them all aside for Temeteri, whose beauty exceeded theirs; and so they hated her and laughed at her

mother. Then Taku, being pressed by old Poh re, spoke in the tongue of Chili, but not of Temeteri.

"Ah! She sprang to her feet and talked then! and the flying words chased one another from her lips; and these

things told she to Taku: She had hidden among the broken lava and watched the little captain come back to

the boat and bid us farewell. Then when night came she had crept out and gone far over to the great papaku,

and lay down to hide again, for she feared the fighting ship might return to seek her. And all that day she lay

hidden in the lava till night fell upon her again, and hunger drove her to seek the faces of men. In the rain she

"The white girl put her hands to her face and wept, and said: 'Bring me my jacket.'

"I gave to her the blue sailor's jacket, and from inside of it she took a little flat thing and placed it in her

"Again said old Poh re to Taku: 'O man of slow tongue, ask her of Farani.' So he asked in this wise:

"'See, O White Girl, that is Poh re, the mother of Temeteri, who bore a son to the white man that came here

to look upon the Silent Faces; and because he came from thy land, and because of the heart of Temeteri,

which is dried up for love of him, does this foolish old woman ask thee if thou hast seen him; for long months

"The girl looked at Taku the Sailor, and her lips moved, but no words came. Then from her bosom she took

the little flat thing and held it to him, but sickness was in her hand so that it trembled, and that which she held

fell to the ground. So Taku stooped and picked it up from where it lay on the mat, and looked, and his eyes

blazed, and he shouted out 'Aue!' for it was the face of Farani that looked into his! And as he held it up in his

hand to the people, they, too, shouted in wonder; and then the girl Temeteri cast aside those that stood about

"'Who is she?' said the white girl, in a weak voice to Taku; 'and why hath she robbed me of that which is dear

to me?' and Taku was ashamed, and turned his face away from her because of two things his heart was

sore for Temeteri, who is a blood relation, and was shamed because her white lover had deserted her; and he

"The girl raised herself, and her hand caught Taku by the arm, and these were her words: 'O man, for the love

"Now Taku the Sailor was sore troubled, and felt it hard to hurt her heart, yet he said: 'Was Farani, the

"She shook her head. 'I know not, except he loved to look upon strange lands; yet he loved me.'

"'He is a bad man,' said Taku. 'He loved others as well as thee. The girl that fled but now with his picture was

"The girl's head fell on my shoulder, and her eyes closed, and she became as dead; and lo! in a little while, as

"Where she now lies, there died she, at about the hour when the people of Vaihou saw the sails of thy ship.

"We have no priest here, for the good father that was here three years ago is now silent; yet did Taku and I

pray with her. And ere she died she said she would set down some words on paper; so Alrema, my little

daughter, hastened to Mataveri, and the chief sent back some paper and vai tuhi (ink) that had belonged to the

good priest. So with weak hand she set down some words, but even as she wrote she rose up and threw out

her hands, and called out: 'Francisco! Francisco!' and fell back, and was dead."

The captain of the Pocahontas dashed the now fastfalling tears from his eyes, and with his rough old heart

swelling with pity for the poor wanderer, took from Taku the sheet of paper on which the heartbroken girl's

Ere he could read it a low murmur of voices outside told him his crew had returned. They carried a rude

wooden shell, and then with bared heads the captain and boatsteerer entered the house where she lay.

Again the old man raised the piece of navy blue cloth from off the sweet, sad face, and a heavy tear dropped

down upon her forehead. Then, aided by the gentle, sympathetic women, his task was soon finished, and two

of his crew entered and carried their burden to its grave. Service there was none only the prayers and tears

Ere he said farewell the captain of the whaleship placed money in the hands of Varua and Taku. They drew

back, hurt and mortified. Seeing his mistake, the seaman desired Varua to give the money to the girl

"Nay, sir," said Varua, "she would but give me bitter words. Even when she who is now silent was not yet

cold, Temeteri came to the door of the house where she lay and spat twice on the ground, and taking up

gravel in her hand cast it at her, and cursed her in the name of our old heathen gods. And as for money, we

The captain of the Pocahontas rose and came to the cabin table, and motioning to his guests to fill their

"'Tis a real sad story, gentlemen, and if I should ever run across Doctor Francis, I should talk some to him.

But see here. Here is my log; my mate, who is a fancy writist, wrote it at my dictation. I can't show you the

letter that the pore creature herself wrote; that I ain't going to show to any one."

The two captains rose and stood beside him, and read the entry in the log of the Pocahontas.

This day I landed at Easter Island, to try and obtain as a 'green' hand a young Chilian seaman who, the captain

of the Chilian corvette O'Higgins informed me, had run away there. On landing I was shown the body of a

young girl, whom the natives stated to be the deserter. She had died that morning. Buried her as decently as

circumstances would permit. From a letter she wrote on the morning of her death I learned her name to be

Seora Teresa T. Her husband, Dr Francis T, was an Englishman in the service of the Chilian

Republic. He was sent out on a scientific mission to the island, and his wife followed him in the O'Higgins

disguised as a bluejacket. I should take her to have been about nineteen years of age.

"Well, that's curious now," said the skipper of the Nassau; "why, I knew that man. He left the island in the

King Darius, of New Bedford, and landed at Ponape in the Caroline Group, whar those underground ruins are

at Metalanien Harbour. Guess he wanted to potter around there a bit. But he got inter some sorter trouble

"Aye," said the captain of the Dagget, "I remember the affair. I was mate of the Josephine, and we were lying

at Jakoits Harbour when he was killed, and now I remember the name too. Waal, he wasn't much account,

Ten years ago a wandering white man stood, with Taku the Sailor, at the base of the wall of the great papaku,

and the native pointed out the last restingplace of the wanderer. There, under the shadow of the Silent Faces

ONE day a trading vessel lay becalmed off Tatakoto, in the Paumotu Archipelago, and the captain and

supercargo, taking a couple of native sailors with them, went ashore at dawn to catch some turtle. The turtle

were plentiful and easily caught, and after half a dozen had been put in the boat, the two white men strolled

along the white hard beach. The captain old, grizzled, and grim seemed to know the place well, and

The island is very narrow, and as they left the beach and gained the shade of the forest of coconuts that grew

to the margin of highwater mark, they could see, between the tall, stately palms, the placid waters of the

lagoon, and a mile or so across, the inner beach of the weather side of the island.

For a quarter of a mile or so the two men walked on till the widest part of the island was reached. Here, under

the shadow of some giant puka trees, the old skipper stopped and sat down on a roughly hewn slab of coral,

the remains of one of those marae or heathen temples that are to be found almost anywhere in the islands of

"I knew this place well, once," he said, as he pulled out his pipe. "I used to come here when I was sailing one

of Brander's vessels out of Tahiti. As we have done now we did then came here for turtle. No natives have

"Aye, he died here, and his wife and sister too. They all lie here in this old marae."

IT was six years since Brantley, with his companions in misery, had drifted ashore at lonely Vahitahi in the

Paumotu Group, and the kindlyhearted people had gazed with pitying horror upon the dreadful beings that,

muttering and gibbering to each other, lay in the bottom of the boat, and pointed with long talonlike fingers

And now as he sits in the doorway of his thatched house, and gazes dreamily out upon the long curve of

creamy beach and windswayed line of palms that fringe the leeward side of his island home, Brantley passes

He was so full of life of the very joy of living that time six years ago when he sailed from Auckland on

that fateful voyage in the Doris. It was his first voyage as captain, and the ship was his own, and even now he

remembers with a curious timedulled pang the last words of his only sister the Doris after whom he had

called his new ship as she had kissed him farewell "I am so glad, Fred, to hear them call you 'Captain

And the voyage the wild feverish desire to make a record passage to 'Frisco and back; the earnest words of

poor old whiteheaded Lutton, the mate, "not to carry on so at night going through the Paumotu Group"; that

awful midnight crash when the Doris ran hopelessly into the wild boil of roaring surf on Tuanake Reef; the

white, despairing faces of five of his men, who, with curses in their eyes upon his folly, were swept out of

sight into the awful blackness of the night. And then the days in the boat with the six survivors! Ah! the

memory of that will chill his blood to his dying day. Men have had to do that which he and the two who came

How long they endured that black agony of suffering he knew not. By common consent none of them ever

Three months after they had drifted ashore, a passing sperm whaler, cruising through the group, took away

the two seamen, and then Brantley, after bidding them a silent farewell, had, with bitter despair gnawing at

his heart, turned his face away from the ship, and walked. back into the palmshaded village.

"I will never go back again," he had said to himself. And perhaps he was right; for when the Doris went to

pieces on Tuanake his hope and fortunes went with her, and, save for that other Doris, there was no one in the

world who cared for him. He was not the man to face the world again with: "Why, he lost his first ship!"

And this is how Brantley young, handsome, and as smart a seaman (save for that one fatal mistake) as

ever trod a deck became Paranili the Papalagi, and was living out his life among the people of solitary

Ere a year had passed a trading captain bound to the Gambier Islands had given him a small stock of trade

goods, and the thought of Doris had been his salvation. Only for her he would have sunk to the life of a mere

idle, gindrinking, and dissolute beachcomber. As it was, his steady, straightforward life among the people

of the island was a big factor to his business success. And so every year he sent money to Doris by some

passing whaler or Tahitian trading schooner, but twice only had he got letters from her; and each time she had

said: "Let me come to you, Fred. We are alone in the world, and may never meet again else. Sometimes I

awake in the night with a sudden fear. Let me come; my heart is breaking with the loneliness of my life here,

But two years ago he had done that which would keep Doris from ever coming to him, he thought. He had

married a young native girl that is, taken her to wife in the Paumotuan fashion and surely Doris, with

her oldfashioned notions of right and wrong, would grieve bitterly if she knew it.

Presently he rose, talking to himself as is the wont of those who have lived long apart from all white

associations, and sauntered up and down the shady path at the side of his dwelling, thinking of Doris, and if

Seated on the matted floor with her face turned from him was a young native girl Luita, his wife. She was

making a hat from the bleached strands of the pandanus leaf, and as she worked she sang softly to herself in

Brantley, lazily stretching himself out on a rough matcovered couch, turned towards her, and watched the

slender, supple fingers covered, in Polynesian fashion, with heavy gold rings as they deftly drew out

the snowwhite strands of the pandanus. The long, glossy, black waves of hair that fell over her bare back

and bosom like a mantle of night hid her face from his view, and the man let his glance rest in contented

admiration upon the graceful curves of the youthful figure; then he sighed softly, and again his eyes turned to

the wide, sailless expanse of the Pacific, that lay shimmering and sparkling before him under a cloudless sky

Steadily the little hands worked in and out among the snowy strands, and now and then, as she came to the

tari, or refrain, of the old Paumotuan lovesong, her soft liquid tones would blend with the quavering treble

"Ter navahori, teeth of pearl, Knit the sandals for Talaloo's feet, /L>Sandals of afa thick and strong, Bind

Suddenly the song ceased, and with a quick movement of her shoulders she threw back the cloud of hair that

fell around her arms and bosom, looked up at Brantley and laughed, and, striking the mat on which she sat

He rose from the couch and stooped beside her, with his hands resting on his knees, and bending his brow in

Springing to her feet, hat in hand, and placing her two hands on his now erect shoulders, she looked into his

"Behold, Paranili, thy pulou is finished, save for a band of black pu'ava which thou shalt give me from the

"Mine?" said Brantley, in pretended ignorance. "Why labour so for me? Are there not hats in plenty on

"True, O thankless one! but the women of the village say that thou lookest upon me as a fool because I can

neither make mats nor do many other things such as becometh a wife. And for this did Merani, my cousin,

teach me how to make a wide hat of fala to shield thy face from the sun when thou art out upon the pearling

grounds. Aieeh! my husband, but thy face and neck and hands are as dark as those of the people of

Makatea they who are for ever in their canoes. . . . See, Paranili, bend thy head. Aieeh! thou art a tall

man, my husband," and she trilled a happy, rippling laugh as she placed the hat on his head.

He placed one hand around the pliant waist and under the mantle of hair, and drew her towards him, and then,

The girl drew away from him, and, for the first time in two years Brantley saw an angry flush tinge her cheek

"Ah!" the contemptuous ring in her voice made the man's eyes drop "thou art like all White Men

was there ever one who was faithful? What other woman is it that thou desirest? Is it Nia of Ahunui she

who, when thy boat lay anchored in the lagoon, swam off at night and asked thee for thy love the

The angry light in the black eyes shone fiercely, and the dull red on her cheeks had changed to the livid

Brantley, holding the rim of the hat over his mouth, laughed secretly, pleased at her first outburst of jealousy.

Somewhat sullenly the girl obeyed and edged up beside him with face bent down. He put his hand upon hers,

and for a few seconds looked at the delicate tracery of tattooing that, on the back, ran in thin blue lines from

"What a dd pity!" he muttered to himself; "this infernal tattooing would give the poor devil away

anywhere in civilization. Her skin is not as dark as that pretty creole I was so sweet on in Galveston ten years

ago . . . Well, she's good enough for a broken man like me but I can't take her away that's certain."

A heavy tear splashed on his hand, and then he pulled her to him, almost savagely.

"See, Luita. I did but ask to try thee. Have no fear. Thy land is mine for ever."

The girl looked up, and in an instant her face, wet with tears, was laid against his breast. Still caressing the

dark head that lay upon his chest, Brantley stooped and whispered something. The little tattooed hand

"And would that bind thee more to me, and to the ways of these our people of Vahitahi," she asked, with still

"Aye," answered the excaptain slowly, "for I have none but thee in the world to care for."

She turned her face up. "Is there none not even one woman in faroff Beretania, whose face comes to thee

Brantley shook his head sadly. Of course there was Doris, he thought, but he had never spoken of her.

Sometimes when the longing to see her again would come upon him, he would have talked of her to his

native wife, but he was by nature an uncommunicative man, and the thought of how Doris must feel her

Another year passed, and matters had gone well with Brantley. Ten months before he had dropped on one of

the best patches of shell in the Paumotus, and today, as he sits writing and smoking in the big room of his

house, he looks contentedly out through the open door to a little white painted schooner that lay at anchor on

the calm waters of the lagoon. He had just come back from Tahiti with her, and the two thousand dollars he

had paid for the vessel was an easy matter for a man who was now making a thousand dollars a month.

"What a stroke of luck!" he writes to Doris. "Had I gone back to Sydney, where would I be now? a mate, I

suppose, on some deepsea ship, earning �12 or �14 a month. Another year or two like this, and I can go

back a made man. Some day, my dear, I may; but I will come back here again. The ways of the people have

He laid down his pen and came to the door, and stood thinking awhile and listening to the gentle rustle of the

"Yes," he thought, "I would like to go and see Doris, but I can't take Luita, and so it cannot be. How that girl

suspects me even now. When I went to Tahiti to buy the schooner, I believe she thought she would never see

me again.... What a fool I am! Doris is all right, I suppose, although it is a year since I had a letter . . . and I

could any man want more. I don't believe there's a soul on the island but thinks as much of me as Luita

herself does; and, by Gd! she's a pearl even though she is only a native girl. No, I'll stay here; 'Kapeni

Paranili' will always be a big man in the Paumotus, but Fred Brantley would be nobody in Sydney only a

common merchant skipper who had made money in the islands. . . . And perhaps Doris is married."

So he thought and talked to himself, listening the while to the soft symphony of the swaying palmtops and

the subdued murmur of the surf as the rollers crashed on the distant line of reef away to leeward. Of late these

fleeting visions of the outside world that quick, busy world, whose memories, save for those of Doris,

were all but dead to him had become more frequent; but the calm, placid happiness of his existence, and

that strange, fatal glamour that for ever enwraps the minds of those who wander in the islands of the sunlit

sea as the old Spanish navigators called Polynesia had woven its spell too strongly over his nature to

be broken. And now, as the murmur of women's voices caused him to turn his head to the shady end of the

verandah, the dark, dreamy eyes of Luita, who with her women attendants sat there playing with her child,

looked out at him from beneath their long lashes, and told him his captivity was complete.

A week afterwards the people of Vahitahi were clustered on the beach putting supplies of native food in the

schooner's boat. That night he was to sail again for the pearling grounds at Matahiva lagoon, and would be

One by one the people bade him adieu, and then stood apart while he said farewell to Luita.

The girl shook her head, and her mouth twitched. "But the miti, Paranili the miti of my mother. She is

wise in the things that are hidden; for she is one of those who believe in the old gods of Vahitahi. . . . And

there are many here of the new lotu who yet believe in the old gods. And, see, she has dreamed of this

unknown evil to thee twice; and twice have the voices of those who are silent in the marae called to me in the

Knowing well how the old superstitious taint ran riot in the imaginative native mind, Brantley did not attempt

She dropped on the sand at his feet and clasped his knees, and a long, wailing note of grief rang out

"Aue! aue! my husband! if it so be that thou dost not heed the voices that call in the night, then, out of thy

love for me and our child, let me come also. Then, if evil befall thee, let us perish together."

Brantley raised his hand and pointed to the bowed and weeping figure. Some women came and lifted her up.

Then taking the tender face between his rough hands, he bent his head to hers, sprang into the boat, and was

WITH ten tons of shell snugly stowed in her hold, the little Tamariki was heading back for Vahitahi after

barely two months' absence. Brantley, as he leant over the rail and watched the swirl and eddy of the creamy

phosphorescence that hissed and bubbled under the vessel's stern, felt well satisfied.

It was the hour of dawn, and the native at the tiller sang, as the stars began to pale before the red flush that

tinged the sky to windward, a low chant of farewell to Fetuaho, the star of the morning, and then he called to

Brantley, who to all his crew was always "Paranili," and never "Kapeni," and pointed with his naked, tattooed

"Look, Paranili, that is Tatakoto, the place I have told thee of, where the turtle makes the white beach to look

"Thou glutton!" said Brantley, goodhumouredly, "dost thou think I am like to lose a day so that thou and thy

Rua Manu laughed, and showed his white, even teeth. "Nay, Paranili, not for that alone; but it is a great place,

that Tatakoto, and thou hast never landed there to look, and Luita hath said that some day she would ask thee

to take her there; for, though she was born at Vahitahi, her blood is that of the people of Tatakoto, who have

Brantley had often heard her speak of it, this solitary spot in the wide Pacific, and now, as he looked at the

pretty, verdureclad island against the weather shore of which the thundering rollers burst with a muffled

roar, he was surprised at its length and extent, and decided to pay it a visit some day.

"Not now, Rua," he said to the steersman, "but it shall be soon. Are there many coconuts there?"

"Many? May I perish, but the trees are as the sand of the sea, and the nuts lie thick upon the ground.

"Glutton again! Be content. In a little while we and as many of the people of Vahitahi as the schooner will

Three days afterwards the schooner was within fifty miles of his island home, when Brantley was aroused at

daylight from his watch below by the cry of "Te pahi!" (a ship!) and hastening on deck he saw a large vessel

bearing down upon them. In half an hour she was close to, and Brantley recognised her as a brig from Tahiti,

that occasionally made a trading voyage to the Paumotus, and whose skipper was a personal friend. Suddenly

she hoveto and lowered a boat, which came alongside the schooner, and the white man that steered jumped

"How are you, Brantley?" and then his eye went quickly over the crew of the schooner, then glanced through

the open skylight into the little cabin, and a hopeful, expectant look in his face died away.

As Brantley took his seat beside him, Latham said: "I have bad news for you, Brantley. Your sister is on

board the brig, and I fear she will not live long. She came down to Tahiti in the Marama from Auckland, and

Latham looked at him curiously. "Didn't you know, Brantley? She's in a rapid consumption."

"Just so. That's what I told Miss Brantley. Well, it's this your wife and child are missing" Latham

glanced at him and saw that his hand trembled and then grasped the gunwale of the boat.

"We got into Vahitahi lagoon about ten days ago, and I took Miss Brantley ashore. What happened I don't

exactly know, but the next night one of your whaleboats was gone, and Luita and the child were missing.

Your sister was in a terrible state of mind, and offered me a thousand dollars to put to sea. Brantley, old man,

I wouldn't take a dollar from her God bless her but I did put to sea, and I've searched nigh on twenty

"Thank you, Latham," said Brantley quietly; "when we get on board you can give me further particulars of

"You can have my marked chart; I've got a spare one. Brace up, old man! you'll see your sister in a minute.

She is terribly cut up over poor Luita more so than I knew you would be. But she was a grand little

"Yes," he answered, in the same slow, dazed manner, "she was a good little girl to me, although she"

Latham showed him into the brig's cabin, and then a door opened, and Doris threw herself weeping into his

"Oh, Doris," he whispered, "why did you not tell me you were ill? I would have come to you long ago. I feel

She placed her hand on his lips. "Never mind about me, Fred. Has Captain Latham told you about"

"Yes," he replied; and then suddenly: " Doris, I am going to look for her; I think I know the place to which

she has gone. It is not far from here. Doris, will you go on back to Vahitahi with Latham and wait for me?"

"Fred," she whispered, "let me come with you. It will not be long, dear, before I am gone, and it was hard to

He kissed her silently, and then in five minutes more they had said farewell to Latham, and were on their way

The crew soon knew from him what had happened, and Rua Manu, with his big eyes filled with a wondering

pity as he looked at the frail body and white face of Doris lying on the skylight, wore the schooner's head

"Aye, Paranili," he said, in his deep, guttural tones, "it is to Tatakoto she hath gone 'tis her mother's land."

That night, as she lay on the skylight with her hand in his, Doris told him all she knew:

"They were all kind to me when I went ashore to your house, Fred, but Luita looked so fiercely at me. . . . Her

"In the morning your little child was taken ill with what they call tataru, and I wanted to give it medicine.

Luita pushed my hand away and hugged the child to her bosom; and then the other women came and made

signs for me to go away. And that night she and the child were missing, and one of your boats was gone."

"Poor Luita," said Brantley, stroking Doris's pale cheek, "she did not know you were my sister. I never told

"She is a very beautiful woman, Fred. They told me at Tahiti that she was called the pearl of Vahitahi; and

Late in the afternoon of the second day, just as the trade wind began to lose its strength, the schooner was

running along the weatherside of Tatakoto, and Rua Manu, from the masthead, called out that he saw the

boat lying on the beach inside the lagoon, with her sail set; and, as landing was not practicable on the

"We will soon know, Doris. It always rains in these islands at this time of the year, so she would not suffer as

I once did; but the sail of the boat is still set, and that makes me think she has never left it. Wait till I come

And Doris,throwing her weak arms round his neck, kissed him with a sob, and lay back again to wait.

With Rua Manu and two others of his faithful native crew, Brantley walked quickly across the island to the

lagoon to where the boat lay. Luita was not there, and the dark eyes of his sailors met his in a responsive

They turned back into the silent aisles of coconut palms, and then Rua Manu loudly called her name.

"Ter navahori, bending low, Bindeth the sandals on Talaloo's feet; 'Hasten, O hasten, lover true, O'er the

coral, cruel and sharp, Over the coral, and sand, and rock, Snare thee a turtle for our marriage feast; Ia akoe!

"In the old marae, Paranili," said Rua Manu, pointing to the remains of a ruined temple. Motioning to the

seamen to remain outside, Brantley entered the crumbling walls of the old heathen marae. At the far end was

A few minutes passed, and then his hand was thrust out between the branches as a sign for them to follow.

One by one they came and sat beside Brantley, who held the wasted figure of the wanderer in his arms. The

sound of his voice had brought back her wavering reason, and she knew them all now. She knew, too, that her

brief young life was ebbing fast; for, as each of the brown men pressed their lips to her hand, tears coursed

"See, men of Vahitahi, my Englishman hath come to me, a fool that fled from his house . . . because I thought

that he lied to me. Teloma was it who first mocked, and said: ''Tis his wife from Beretania who hath come to

seek him;' and then other girls laughed and mocked also, and said: 'Ahhe! Luita, this fairfaced girl who

sayeth she is thy husband's sister, Ahhe!' . . . and their words and looks stung me. . . . So at night I took my

child and swam to the boat. . . . My child, see, it is here," and she touched a little mound in the soil beside

There was a low murmur of sympathy, and then the brown men went outside and covered their faces with

their hands, after the manner of their race when death is near, and waited in silence.

Night had fallen on the lonely island, and the faroff muffled boom of the breakers as they dashed on the

black ledges of the weather reef would now and then be borne into the darkness of the little hut.

As the bearded face of the man bent over her, one thin, weak arm rose waveringly in the air, and then fell

softly round his neck, and Brantley, with his hand upon her bosom, felt that her heart had ceased to beat.

The next day he sailed the schooner into the lagoon, and Doris pressed her lips on the dead forehead of the

native girl ere she was laid to rest. Something that Doris had said to him as they walked away from her grave

filled Brantley's heart with a deadly fear, and as he took her in his arms his voice shook.

"Don't say that, Doris. It cannot be so soon as that. I was never a good man; but surely God will spare you to

But it came very soon on the morning of the day that he intended sailing out of the lagoon again, Doris

died in his arms on board the schooner, and Brantley laid her to rest under the shade of a giant pukatree that

That night he called Rua Manu into the cabin and asked him if he could beat his way back to Vahitahi in the

"'Tis an easy matter, Paranili. So that the sky be clear and I can see the stars, then shall I find Vahitahi in

"Good. Then tomorrow take the schooner there, and tell such of the people as desire to be with me to come

here, and bring with them all things that are in my house. It is my mind to live here at Tatakoto."

As the schooner slipped through the narrow passage, he stood on the low, sandy point, and waved his hand in

A week later the little vessel dropped her anchor in the lagoon again, and Rua Manu and his crew came

They found him lying under the shade of the pukatree with his revolver in his hand and a bullethole in his

"Neither do men put new wine into old bottles; else the bottles break and the wine runneth out and the bottles

THE Kellet Passmore, of New Bedford, had just dropped anchor in the Bay of Islands, and Captain Amos

Bennett came ashore to look for some new hands. But the skipper was pretty well known, and although there

were plenty of men, both whites and natives, to be had by any other whaleship captain, there was none

anxious to try his luck in the Kellet Passmore. It was far better, they argued, for them to do another month or

two of solid loafing ashore, where there was plenty of cheap grog, and where the charms of very

unconventional Maori female society were so easily available, and wait for another whaleship to come

along, than to ship in this particular barque. For every "blubber hunter," from Talcahuana on the coast of

South America to Kororareka in the Bay of Islands on the coast of New Zealand, knew that Captain Bennett

was not a nice man to sail with, and those who did sail with him, whether the old barque met with bad luck or

"greasy" luck, generally left her at the first port she touched at after a cruise, with broken noses, smashed

jaws, or fractured ribs, superinduced by knuckledusters, belayingpins, and other cheerless incentives to

industry wielded by the unsparing hands of Captain Amos Bennett and the afterguard of his ship.

Smoking an extremely long and very strong cigar, Captain Bennett slouched into the leading combined store

and grog shanty, which in those days was the rendezvous of every one living in the Bay, and in amiable tones

Some twelve or fifteen men, whites, Kanakas, and Maoris, who were loafing about the store in expectation of

the captain's visit, accepted his invitation with sundry nods, pushes, and winks among themselves, and after

drinking a stiff tot of what was known locally as "hell biled down to a small half pint," Mauta, a Tongan

halfcaste boatsteerer, respectfully asked the captain if he had had much luck on his present cruise.

This was Captain Bennett's opportunity, and for the following ten minutes he lied rapidly and artistically

about the Kellet Passmore's wonderful luck in past cruises, but admitted that, on the present one, since he had

left New Bedford five months before, he had taken but three whales, "princerpully," he said, "on accaount of

some passengers I hev aboard who are in a h of a hurry ter get up ter Ponape, in the Caroline group."

"No," replied the American, drawing up one of his long legs, clasping his lengthy arms around his knee, and

shutting his left eye, "mission'ries from Bosting, agoin' daown tew the Carolines tew save the ragin' heathen

in his blindness from bowin' daown tew wood an' stone, and tew teach them tew charge a dollar each for a

The men laughed, and Captain Bennett, without moving a muscle of his long, solemn visage, nodded to the

"No wonder you losa the whala, captain," said a short, muscular Portuguese, who wanted a ship, but had no

intention of trying the Kellet Passmore with her present commander, "de dam missionara he bringa you bada

"Waal," said Bennett, eyeing the speaker keenly through his halfclosed eyes, "I won't say that, because it's

jest my own fault. Yew see, boys, it's jest this way. these here people a man and two females are

darned anxious tew get daown tew the Carolines, and the Bosting Board of Missions paid me five hundred

dollars each for 'em, to give 'em a passage in my ship. Consikently, although we saw whales often enough, I

only lowered after 'em three times, when they was close to. Yew see, these here people heving paid a big

An incredulous grin went round among the men, which Bennett affected not to notice, then he resumed by

remarking, that as he always liked to do the square thing he was going to count the fifteen hundred dollars'

"That sounds square," whispered a white sailor to a young, seamanlike man who sat upon a case at the

further end of the store. "He can't be a bad sort. I'm for one if he wants men."

"Lies," said the young fellow; "but don't let me stop you. I can tell you all about him though. He's the two

Having given those present two drinks each, Captain Bennett got to business, and lighting another cigar,

But although they drank his rum cheerfully, and were willing to drink more, and listened with stolid

complacency to his alluring inducements about a full ship in twelve months, he talked in vain.

Then the deep fountains of Captain Amos Bennett's nautical blasphemy were broken up, and having violently

cursed each man separately and the lot collectively, and insinuated that they were not fit to tend cows, let

An hour or two later he strode down towards his boat with five Maori hands in tow. When close to the beach

some one hailed him from the rear, and the leathernvisaged Yankee, chawing fiercely at his Manilla, slewed

round on his heel and, with needless profanity, asked the speaker what the he wanted.

"Not the kinder men bummin' around here, anyway," snarled Bennett, recognising in the man who spoke to

him the young fellow who had sat upon the box in the corner of the store; and then looking at the bronzed

"I was there," replied the young man quietly, "but," and he stepped directly in front of the American, "if you

call me a Yahoo you'll lose a good man for the Kellet Passmore, and get a hell of a bashing into the bargain."

The skipper of the whaleship was no coward, but he knew he would stand a poor show with the man before

him, and he wanted men badly. His thin face underwent some hideous squirmings and contortions intended

"Young feller, yew hev some spirit; I kin see that right away. Naow, I do want men, and yew want a ship, and

"Stow all that," said the man coolly. "I know all about the Kellet Passmore and all about you, too. I'm willing

to go in her for part of the cruise. But it'll take a smarter man than you to haze me, so don't try it on."

The audacity of this speech seemed to stagger the American considerably, but he soon recovered himself.

"Yew air mighty smart, young feller," he said presently, in a low, rasping voice, and his thin lips parted and

showed his yellow teeth; "and what sorter persition aboard of my ship may I hev the honour ev asking yew to

"Any dd thing you like. I hear you've got a lot of cripples for boatsteerers, and you can't get a better

"Do tell?" and Bennett grinned sarcastically, "then you'll be a darned different sort from any other Britisher

The skipper beckoned to his boat's crew, who lay upon their oars waiting for him, to back on to the beach,

"Yes, come aboard, young feller; I guess we'll pull together. Seems to me your face is kinder familiar like tew

"No, not in the Wanderer. I was boatsteerer six years ago in the Prudence Hopkins, of New Bedford; I was

Another attempt at a pleasant smile distorted Captain Bennett's features. "Waal, naow, see here; this is

surprisin'! Why, I cert'nly thought I reckernised yew. Yew was in the Wanderer in Vavau, daown in the

Friendly Islands, 'bout a year ago. Why, I remember comin' aboard ev that thar ship one day."

"So do I," nonchalantly replied the young man; "a couple of your hands Kanakas swam off to our ship

"That's so, mister. I remember the circumstances exactly. Darned lazy cusses they were, too."

"Think so? I don't. We had them with us on the Wanderer for ten months; better men never struck a fish. You

"Mister, I could not. They belonged to the Matelotas Islands, in the Carolines, and when my second mate

started to rouse 'em around and knock some of their darned Kanaka laziness outer them, they actooaly driv a

The American captain kept silence for a while, and nought broke the silence save the sound of the oars as the

IN a few minutes the boat ranged alongside; the five new Maori hands, preceded by Captain Bennett and the

other white man, clambered up on deck, and the boat was about to be passed astern, when the skipper called

"Mr Herrera, I reckon yew kin keep the boat alongside. Thar's goin' ter be some changes aboard this ship in a

The mate, a darkbrowed, blackwhiskered man of thirtyfive or so, whose regular features and olive

complexion showed him to be either a Spaniard or a Portuguese, answered the rasping accents of the Yankee

skipper with a soft, modulated "Ay, ay, sir," and nodding a "Goodday, sir," to the stranger, whom he could

see was, by his dress and demeanour, no common seaman, turned away to execute his captain's orders.

There was no one in the cabin but the mulatto steward, who was laying the table, and the captain, taking a

"Barrington John Barrington," said the other, looking directly into Bennett's eyes and stroking his

"Waal, Mr Barrington, I ain't agoin' tew jaw long over this business. I want men that's what I came in here

to this rotten hole fur. Waal, I've got five Maoris, and I reckon that's all I can get. But I want a second mate."

"Waal, look here. I rather think you'll suit me, although," and here the skipper scratched a bony cheek

"And you're a Down East Yank, used to Down East mates, and Dago second mates, and mangy greasers of all

sorts. I'm a Britisher, as you say; but if you don't want me, why the blazes did you bring me aboard? This

rotten old crate of yours isn't the only whaleship in the Pacific!" and Barrington took up his hat.

"Sit daown, mister, sit daown, and don't yew use sich vi'lent language," and Bennett indicated by a backward

jerk of his dirty thumb and another villainous squint, a halfopened cabin door at his back, "thar's females in

Barrington muttered an apology, not to the captain, but to the soft murmur of women's voices that he now

"Look here, naow, it's no use either you or me backin' and fillin' in this ridiklous sorter way. My second mate

wants to leave, an' I ain't too dreadful anxious to stop him he don't suit me by no means naow, yew

want a ship an' I want an officer. I ain't got but two boatheaders in the ship worth a cuss; so ef yew are

"I don't want to make the whole cruise with you, I only want to get up to the Carolines. If you like to put me

ashore anywhere near Ponape, or Truk, or a little island called Lsap, I'm willing to do second mate's duty

aboard. I don't want a 'cut in', if we kill any whales between here and there all I want is a passage to any

"Young man, ef yew want a free passage in this ship I recken yew hev got to pay for it."

"Just as you like; I'm able and willing to pay. But then, mind, I don't do a hand's turn aboard this ship if I pay

"What might be your objek, mister, in going daown thar at all, ef yew don't mind my askin'?"

"I don't see how the devil it concerns you if I go as a passenger but I will tell you. I was trading down

on Ponape a little over two years ago, and got tired of it. I ran out of trade goods, and had no money to buy

any. So I shipped again in the Wanderer, and the skipper landed my native wife at Lsap, where her mother's

people belong. She's to wait there till I return. Then I'm going back to Ponape, or Yap, or any other place

where there's money to be made. I've got no trade goods, but have money enough to buy some from the first

Bennett considered a moment or two, and then said: "Waal, young fellow, I recken we can make a deal

"Lsap, if you can manage it. That's where my wife is living; if not, Truk, or one of the islands thereabouts

will do me. I'm bound to get a passage to Lsap from Truk in one of the big canoes that go there once a year."

"It's a deal, mister. I'll send my second mate ashore here, and be darned to him, and yew can take his place. Ef

we don't get set too fur to the eastward by the current there's nothin' but ragin' calms and blarsted

"Right," said Barrington, "when you send the boat ashore here with your second mate let your men get my

"Naow, thet's business. I kin see that yew an' me'll git along bully. Here, steward, bring us suthin' to drink,

Having secured a man whom he was sure would prove a good officer, Captain Amos Bennett was now in a

good temper, and in a few minutes after he had settled with Barrington he had told him all about the voyage

of the Kellet Passmore since she had left New Bedford, and the shortcomings of his crew. Then his natural

inborn curiosity asserted itself again, and he began to question Barrington as to his reasons for leaving the

Drinking off his grog, the young man put his hand inside his coat, drew out some papers, and laid them on the

table. There was an angry light in his eye, which the inquisitive American was not slow to perceive, and he

"That's all right. I left the Wanderer in Sydney two months ago, and came over here to look out for another

ship. Why I left her doesn't concern you. I was not asked to leave her, as that will show you, Captain

Bermett," and he handed him a letter. "Do you know Captain Codrington? He's a countryman of yours."

"Rather think I did. He's from daown my way Martha's Vineyard an' a real smart man, although he did

take to whalin' under the British flag," and Captain Bennett gave an amicable snort, and took the paper

It contained but a few lines, saying that the writer, William Codrington, regretted that Barrington had decided

The mate, as he turned to go, passed the halfopened cabin door on the starboard side. He pulled it to gently,

In a few seconds a short, stout man tramped down the companionway and stood in front of the captain.

"And I'm dd glad to get clear of you and this rotten old hooker of a barque. You're a lyin' bully, and this

"Not fur a whitelivered sort like yew, Duggan," snarled back Bennett. "Why, yew ain't fit fur anything

"He is too good and honest a man to remain on board this ship, Captain Bennett," said a soft voice, and a

young woman opened the cabin door that the mate had closed, and stepped into the main cabin.

"And so you are going, Mr Duggan," she said, "my sister and I shall miss you very much. Goodbye," and

"Goodbye, Miss Trenton, and God bless you, miss, and bring you safe home again!"

Almost ere Barrington could get more than a glance at the girl's pale face and deep hazel eyes she had entered

her cabin again and closed the door, and the second mate was addressing his farewell remarks to the captain,

the which, once he was assured that the young lady was out of hearing, he concluded by consigning Bennett

to eternal flames and perdition in a vigorous and lucid manner. Then he tramped off on deck again, where the

"Goodbye, Duggan," said Herrera, holding out his hand, "I am sorry you and the old man can't agree; but

"Oh yes yes. I've got nothing against you. You only knock the men about from force of habit; Bennett

"Especially when there's a pretty girl like Kate Trenton aboard. Look here, Herrera, just you, mind your

The dark, handsome face flushed, and with a curt "goodbye" the mate walked away, and Duggan went down

By sunset the Kellet Passmore was under weigh again, heading for Tongatabu, in the Friendly Islands, where

Just before supper that evening Barrington went below to get a pipe of tobacco. The lamp had not yet been lit,

He was turning to go on deck again when Captain Bennett, who was standing talking to some one, called him

"By God!" muttered Barrington under his breath, "it's that meddlesome Yankee Baptist parson who was

"How are you, Mr Barrington? Is it well with you?" said the missionary, who always affected a Scriptural

"I'm all right, thank you," said Barrington quietly, and then he added, "I did not imagine that you and Mrs

"Well, I thank the Lord! Mr Barrington; she will be here presently. And how comes it, Mr Barrington, that we

"Oh, I'm getting back again. And may I ask the same question of you, Mr Parker? How comes it that you are

"It pleased Providence that the Morning Star, our missionary ship, should be cast away on Strong's Island a

year back. My wife and I, who were then in America, thus had no means of returning to the Vineyard, save

"Sez it was Providence ez wrecked that thar brig, does he?" said Captain Bennett to his new second mate, as

he followed him on deck. "Waal, ef that ain't rich! Providence, hey? It was just because the darned

woodenheaded galoot of a captain hedn't got sense enough tew try and tow her off when the current swep'

her again' the rocks; instead of doin' which he let go his anchor in 'bout a mile deep of water, right 'longside

the reef, and trusted to Providence. Consikently, when she swung round she bashed her starn inter pulp on the

reef. I hain't got no patience with creatures that get inter a hell of a mess and then start yowlin' 'bout the will

Half an hour afterwards, when Barrington came down to supper, Helen Parker rose to meet him with

extended hand. Her face was deadly pale, but the quick eye of Jose Herrera saw that her hand trembled and a

"This is my sister, Mr Barrington. I have just been telling her that you and I were not strangers."

The hazeleyed, curlyhaired girl who sat by her rose and shook hands with the new officer, and said, with a

"How do you do, Mr Barrington? I am sorry Mr Duggan has gone; but I hope I shall like you as much as I did

The new second mate laughed, and even Bennett gave his cachinnatory snuffle; but Mrs Parker kept her pale

"I suppose," said Barrington that night to Herrera, as the two sat smoking in the latter's cabin for a few

minutes, "that that pretty girl is going down to the Carolines to marry some pastyfaced Yankee missionary

Herrera, who lay out at full length in his bunk smoking a Manilla, raised himself on one elbow and looked

searchingly at his fellowofficer, his black eyes shining and sparkling in the darkness.

Barrington was startled, but said nothing; and then, Herrera, still leaning his blackbearded chin upon his

"I don't know, I'm sure," replied Barrington carelessly; "both are goodlooking."

"Goodlooking! Mother of God! Both are lovely and, Mr Barrington, the wife of that ugly devil of a

padre looked at you in a way that I would give five years of my life for her sister to so look at me. My friend,

"You are mistaken, Mr Herrera," said Barrington coldly, "and I may as well tell you that I've got a wife as

good a girl as ever I want and it's not in my nature to run after any one else's wife; and I'm going back to

Presently he resumed: "I do not want to ask impertinent questions of you, but is your wife young and

"Ah! Then you have no eyes for another woman. But, tell me, is it not a very wonderful thing that such a

beautiful woman as the padre's parson, as you call him this padre's wife, should marry such a man?

"I daresay he's a good enough man in his way," replied Barrington; "but, as you say, he's got no brains."

The mate laughed. "And she cares no more for him than she does for black Manuel, the ship's cook! Truly, it

CERTAINLY there was something to wonder about, for the Reverend Hosea Parker was about the last man

in the world one would expect to see a lively and intelligent woman marry, for, while possessing features as

homely as a stone jug, they were not nearly so expressive. Like a great many of his colleagues, however, he

was not as bad as he looked, and honestly believed that Providence intended him for a great mission i.e. to

convert the heathen from his blindness. Until the age of thirty or so he had, to use his own words, been "in the

world, a wordly man," earning a living as a compositor on a Boston religious newspaper largely devoted to

alarmist statements about the vast numbers of South Sea Islanders who were hurrying to perdition for want of

missionary effort. The confined nature of his occupation, and a course of attendances at revival meetings, at

one of which he fell down in a fit, had led to a serious illness, from which he recovered a "concerned" man.

Six months afterwards he was accepted as a "labourer" in the mission field; and a natural, rough eloquence he

possessed so worked upon the feelings of Helen Trenton, one of the young members of a Boston church in

which he was preaching one Sunday, that she in her turn went into hysterics. On being brought to she

found the Reverend Hosea Parker and her mother by her side in her parents' house, and the latter, being very

wealthy but pious people, requested the ruggedfaced preacher to question her as to whether she was feeling

"concerned." The result was that while under a sort of mild religious mania twelve months later she

became Mrs Hosea Parker, and went out with her husband to the Caroline Islands. Six years' residence among

the unconventional people of those parts convinced her that if her husband was intended for a saver of souls

she was not, and that Providence, or the tropical climate, had dealt very hardly with her in the matter of her

complexion. After a short visit to her native city she was now returning with her husband with a despairing

feeling in her heart that she wasn't so good a woman as her Boston friends supposed her to be, and that the

advent of a young English trader to Ponape, where she was engaged in hopelessly "labouring" to instruct the

But that was three or four years ago, and the English trader had gone away out of her life altogether, when

one day a whaleship called in to buy turtle and poultry and let the crew indulge in the usual amusements

That evening the Reverend Hosea Parker had told her in his solemn, woodenheaded manner that the captain

of the whaler had informed him that he had lost one of his officers during the voyage, and had shipped

"And I really must say, Helen, that I am not sorry to see that young man go away from here. His manner of

life here is a standing reproach to us both, and I have wrestled hard with him, but without avail."

"He is no worse than most of the white men in these islands, Hosea," she had said timidly. "You must

remember that by the native custom Nadee is his wife just as much as I am yours. I am afraid, Hosea, that

Poor little woman! She wasn't prejudiced against the goodlooking, devilmaycare English, trader, but she

The Reverend Hosea sat down, and, placing his hands upon his knees, looked into his wife's face with the

same expression he was wont to employ when reprimanding one of his native girlpupils for indulging in the

"Have you possibly forgotten what that young man said to me when I spoke to him with reference to the

Mrs Hosea had not forgotten. Indeed, she had been present and well within hearing on the occasion, and was

not likely to forget the incident. However, being a wise woman, she said nothing, and when that evening Mr

John Barrington strolled nonchalantly up to the missionhouse to say goodbye to the Reverend Hosea, to

whom, although he had always been at loggerheads with him, the trader bore no malice, pretty Mrs Parker

stifled her desire to cry, and said goodbye bravely enough. Then, when from the missionhouse verandah

she saw the Tuscana slowly sail out of Jakoits Harbour, she went back into the sittingroom, and, sobbing

softly to herself, wondered what would have happened if she had met handsome Jack Barrington before the

Reverend Hosea Parker had convinced her that she was a fitting colleague for him to help to save the souls of

the "perishing" heathen in the Caroline Islands. And so, as she thought, the one man who could have been

anything to her passed away out of her life, and his absence seemed to accentuate the personal homeliness of

feature of the Reverend Hosea more and more to her, so much so that one day during the voyage back she

told her sister Kate, who was coming out to the islands with her to stay, that she didn't care a straw about

either the dullminded man she had married or the heathen in whom he took such a useless interest.

The big hazel eyes of Kate Trenton opened in shocked surprise. The day had been close and sultry, and the

Kellet Passmore was lying becalmed with the pitch bubbling up between her. deck planking, and the two

"Poor Helen!" said the girl, stroking her sister's face, "the weather has upset you. I know I feel it myself. Even

"Kate," and Mrs Parker sat up on the lounge where she had been lying down endeavouring to read, "Kate, do

you know that Mr Herrera seems to take altogether too much interest in you. You surely would not be foolish

Kate Trenton turned her face away for a moment or two from her sister's eyes and made no answer, but her

"What a hypocrite I am, Kate, to talk like this to you. Of course I know you love him, and he loves you, and

"But I do say it, dear. Why shouldn't I? Don't make the horrible mistake that I have made marry a man to

"Helen!" and Kate put her arms lovingly around her, alarmed at something that sounded dangerously like the

first break of a sob in her voice, "surely, dear, you have never met any one whom you have cared for in that

The mention of Hosea's name broke up Mrs Parker's resolution never to tell Kate anything about the matter.

"Yes, I did," she whimpered, "and the horrible part of it was that he lived quite close to us, and although he

and I met very often I don't believe he ever gave me a thought, and when he went away the cruel wretch

asked me if I would mind letting (sob) his wife stay with me (sob) until he came (sob) back for her."

"Helen, what dreadful things you are telling me! What does it all mean? Who was this man?"

"I might as well tell you all about it, Kate," she said wearily. "I don't suppose I shall ever see him again, and I

want you to see what a silly fool I have been about a man that I suppose would have made game about the

'skypilot's wife' among his rough associates had he known that I cared for him."

"HE was, or rather had been, a mate on a Sydney whaleship, but quarrelled with his captain" her face

flushed scarlet "quarrelled over a native girl, and Barrington that was his name broke the captain's

jaw with a blow of his fist and then deserted. All this took place at an island hundreds of miles away from

Ponape. The ship sailed without him, and a few months afterwards he turned up at a native village about four

miles from the mission; he brought with him a young girl and an old hag. The natives took a great liking to

him, and he lived with them for a month or so until a tradingship called. The captain sold him some trade

goods, and the next thing we heard was that the chief had built him a house for himself and Nadee, his

"Helen! Surely you could never have cared for a man who would disgrace himself in that way, even had you

"My dear Kate, when you have lived a few years in the Islands you will hold different opinions about a man

"It is a disgrace, Helen," said the girl hotly. "Supposing one of our brothers married a coloured woman, what

"In America or Europe, that he had shocking bad taste in the South Sea Islands, that he meant to settle

"Helen! How can you, a missionary's wife, say such things? What would your husband"

"My husband, Kate, is only a unit in a vast crowd of silly people who throw away millions of dollars every

year in sending out people sillier than themselves to worry heathen people about their souls."

"O Helen, Helen! is this the end of your once great hope? I remember how fervent you once were about

"Oh yes, so do I, Kate," she answered desperately, pushing back her hair wearily from her temples, "but I

know better now. I wish mother and father hadn't been quite so pious. Then I would never have met and

"I'm sick and tired of it all, Kate. If you were not with me I would jump overboard. Perhaps, if I hadn't met

that wretched man I would have gone on all right to the end in the laudable effort to put new wine into old

bottles, meaning thereby cramming simple native minds with Bostonmade theology."

"Helen," and Kate Trenton wound her arms round her sister's waist, "I'm so sorry, dear. Try and put this man

"Don't be such a little fool. Of course it's all finished long ago; but oh, Kit, I was sorry to see him go. He was

so different from every other man I have ever met. Hosea disliked him intensely."

"That is just what he did not do. He only came to the missionhouse occasionally, and Hosea talked such

dreadful twaddle to him in that hideously stupid, dull voice of his that he was glad to get away."

"What could such a man as he, Helen, have to talk about in common with your husband?"

"A good deal, Kit. He had a great influence over the natives, and Hosea was jealous, and made no secret of it.

Sometimes there would nearly be a quarrel," and here she laughed, "and I would enjoy it anything was

better than listening to Hosea's monotonous droning about the perversity of some chief or other who didn't

want Christianity, but did want square gin, and axes, and knives, and muskets, and refused to cut down his

harem to one. There, don't be shocked, dear, but just sit quietly and listen. It's such a relief for me to break out

at last and let you see what a scandalous creature I am. But, oh, Kit, dear, just imagine what I have gone

through for nearly six years. Night after night to sit in the front room of the missionhouse and listen to

Hosea droning out his translations of the Scriptures to our sleepy native servants; then to go to bed and awake

suddenly in the silence of the night and hear the droning of the surf which was almost as bad as Hosea's

on the reef miles away. Sometimes I would get up and have a good cry and wish that I were dead. Perhaps

"Oh yes, several. But none like him. There were three or four traders on the island, ignorant, rough men, but

they never came near the mission, except on one occasion when one of them, named Paddy Kerr, called on

behalf of his colleagues to tell Hosea that he was a meddlesome fool, and that if he, or any of his native

teachers, 'came foolin' around their way teachin' natives that all white men, excep' those that come in the

Morning Star missionary ship, was rogues,' they (the traders) would duck him in the lagoon."

"Not a bit of it, my dear. There is a great deal to be said on both sides. We missionaries are a meddlesome lot,

Kitty, and these English and American traders are men dreadful scamps, no doubt, many of them, but then

they came here long before we did, and I don't think it right for us to prejudice the natives against them."

"Helen! How can you? I am afraid that this trader friend of yours has done you no good."

"He has done me good, Kit he and the rougher men he was associated with. I went to the islands a

religious pedant, and my narrowmindedness and silly bigotry received some severe shocks. There, dear, I

won't horrify you any more. Did you hear what Captain Bennett said to Hosea last night at supper about

"No, Helen, I hate the man, and always get away from the table as quickly as possible."

"You shouldn't. He's very amusing. Hosea believes that total immersion is an allimportant preliminary to

future salvation, and asked Mr Herrera a Catholic, I suppose what his opinion was?"

"Oh, nothing, merely bowed, said he didn't know, and asked Bennett if he intended bending on a new

"Never mind, dear. Well, then Hosea asked Mr Duggan, who only shook his head in agony and nearly choked

himself with a piece of meat; then he asked Captain Bennett. 'Waal, sir,' said Bennett, 'maybe yew air right

and maybe yew air wrong. Ez fur me, I was jest sprinkled in the or'nary way by old Parson Wicks, of

Marblehead, an' I reckon my old mother thought I had jest ez much chance of salvation ez if I'd hev been

The younger woman smiled, but then looked at her sister in surprise. She had never heard her talk like this

"Come on deck, Helen," she said presently, "I hear the sailors hauling the yards round and can feel the ship

moving again. I am so glad. The language that man Bennett uses to the crew terrifies me, and I shall be glad

They went on deck, and as the Kellet Passmore heeled slightly to the breeze that came rippling over the

water, the mate came up to them, and, though he spoke to both, his eyes were for sweetfaced Kate Trenton

"We have the breeze at last, ladies; by tomorrow morning we shall be in the Bay of Islands. Captain Bennett

and Mr Duggan have quarrelled again, and we are going in there to try and get another officer in his place

THREE months had passed, and the Kellet Passmore had crawled lazily along from the coast of New Zealand

to the Friendly Islands, and then from the Friendlies northwards and westward towards the Carolines, till one

The wind was light, so light that the old barque could scarce feel her helm as she rose and fell to the gentle

ocean swell. The islands lay about three miles to windward four small green spots of thicklyclustering

palms, encircled by a wide sweep of reef some ten or fifteen miles in circumference. On the northeast horn

of the reef was the main island of the four, a thick mass of coconut trees and pandanus palms; and five miles

away, at the extreme southern end, were the three smaller islets. These, too, were covered with vegetation

a dense and tangled fringe of low, lightgreen scrub, growing down to the beach; in the centre a few scattered

clumps of coconuts, growing in twos and threes, lifted their stately plumes high above.

Presently John Barrington, who knew the place well, came aft, and after a turn or two along the deck, stopped

"Lovely little spot, isn't it?" he said, turning to Mrs Parker and her sister, who were sitting close together in

Kate Trenton smiled and nodded. She had grown to like Barrington; but her sister, save for a faint pink flush

that came and vanished quickly, took no notice of his remark, and bent her face down over her book.

Six weeks before, when she had met him first at the cabin table, her heart had leaped at the sight of him, only

to die away within her when she found that, either designedly or from utter indifference, he scarcely spoke to

her beyond the requirements of common courtesy. And from that evening to the present time he had seldom

spoken to her directly. But that "the little shemissionary," as he used mentally to call her, had ever at any

time given him a thought, John Barrington never suspected, and while on the island in the olden days, he

had never been nervous or embarrassed in her presence, he was so now, simply because he felt that both she

and her sister were beings so immeasurably above him in their thoughts and life, that they could not but

regard him with that feeling of antagonism natural to educated and refined women who come in contact with

men of loose habits and South Sea morals generally, like himself. And no one knew better than he did his

own failings. Had she come to him in his island home and preached to him on the evil of his ways, he would

have given her a very sharp answer; but here, on board ship, it was a very different matter, and had she

reproached him now about his past existence, when he had lived near her and her husband at the mission

station, he felt he would be utterly incapable of making any defence. Not that Mr John Barrington was in the

slightest degree ashamed of his manner of life as an island trader, and, indeed, he had expressed himself in

very vigorous terms to the Reverend Hosea when that gentleman had made any allusion to the wickedness of

white traders; but at the same time he was conscious that he could not use the same arguments to a young and

"Are we going to send a boat ashore here, Mr Barrington?" asked Kate Trenton presently.

"I think so, Miss Trenton," he replied, and then, as the girl came over near him, and placed her hand on the

rail while she looked at the nearing land, he added in a lower voice, and with a slight smile

"Mr Parker wants Captain Bennett to let him go ashore and ascertain if the native chief will consent to a

teacher landing here the next time the Morning Star missionary brig calls here."

"Why do you laugh, Mr Barrington? Is not my brotherinlaw doing his duty to his conscience? I know you

don't like him neither does Mr Herrera; but I am sure you must feel he is a good man."

Barrington was silent. He detested the jugfaced missionary most cordially, but could not say so to the girl.

"I was not laughing at his desire to go ashore, Miss Trenton; but because of Captain Bennett's remark when

"What was it?" said the girl with a bright smile,looking up into his face. "He's a horrible creature, but does

Barrington, shutting his left eye and scratching his cheek, imitated the captain's "Down East" drawl to

"'Want to go ashore, hey? Waal, I don't mind,' then, calling to the mate, 'Mr Herrera, tell the third mate to get

his boat ready. Mr Parker wants to go ashore to indooce the natives to accep' the Gawspil, and I want to buy

Kate smothered a laugh and turned away, and just then Captain Bennett slouched up on deck, smoking, or

"Howdy, ladies. Nice day, ain't it? Mr Barrington, I'm sendin' two boats away the first mate's and yours;

and ez yew intend to stay here, I'll feel obliged if yew'll help Mr Herrera tew buy some hogs for the ship,

Helen Parker raised her face, and Kate saw that she was deathly pale. Neither of them knew that Barrington

"Aye, aye, sir. I think I can do that. I know the people pretty well. They are a rough lot, but I understand their

"Hehehe," sniggered Bennett, who was disposed to make himself pleasant to his officer, who only a week

before had made fast to and killed the largest whale the ship had yet taken. "Hehehe; so this is the island

A quick glance at Kate Trenton and her sister showed Barrington that they had heard; they were both looking

The answer he made Bennett was given in such a low tone that neither of them caught more than the last

Then, with a black look on his face, Barrington went on the main deck to see to his boat.

"Thet's a most ontractable young man," said Bennett to Hosea Parker, who had now come up on deck in

readiness to go ashore; "he's mighty tetchy about nothin'. Why, most everybody daown in these parts marries

"He will be called to account for it some day, my friend. It is terrible to think that men like him, engaged in

"Land alive, parson, yew do skeer me! I hope Providence ain't agoin' to cut off any of my young men an'

me with only two hundred and seventeen barrels of ile in the ship! Sech a possibility as thet jest gives me a

cold chill daown the back," and the skipper of the Passmore, with a grin on his face, shambled away below

again to get some trade goods together with which to buy the provisions he wanted.

The original crew of the crazy old barque, who had sailed with her from New Bedford, had run away from

her, either one by one or in batches, at the various South American ports at which she had touched, and when

Captain Bennett had put into the Bay of Islands, there was scarecly one of them remaining on board. Those

who had been shipped in their places were either Chilenos, Brazilians, or Western Islands Portuguese men

whom it would not have been safe for Bennett to have knocked about as he did those who had run away. The

use of foul language and reflections upon their parentage they accepted as a matter of course from such a

notorious bully as the captain especially if a whale was lost or a boat stove in but a blow was quite

another matter; and Bennett knew that as well as any one on board, and regulated his conduct to them

accordingly. And then, in the softtongued first mate, Joseph Herrera, many of them had, if not a

countryman, one whom they regarded as such; and Amos Bennett knew, too, that under that

smoothfeatured, effeminatelooking face there lurked the spirit of a tiger, and that although the mate was

quick to come to his aid and uphold his authority when there was any trouble with the crew, he was a

dangerous man to insult or cross. Besides this, he was a good seaman, a splendid officer, and an able

navigator which latter Bennett was not. Therefore he valued him, but, at the same time, secretly despised

him as a "Dago," and took a malignant pleasure in always letting Hosea Parker know that Kate Trenton was

on deck "atalking to that mate of mine," with the result that the pious Hosea would beckon her away, and

AND Herrera although he did his duty with a smiling face, and apparently took no notice of the daily

mutterings of the crew about the bad food and the brutalities of the captain and the third and fourth mates

only bided his time. He had, from the very day that Kate Trenton had come on board, fallen violently in love

with her pink and white beauty, and as the voyage wore on plenty of opportunities of seeing her and talking

to her alone. Long before the barque had let go the anchor in the Bay of Islands, Amos Bennett noticed that a

curious change had come over his chief mate, who, always a reserved man, now seemed quieter than ever,

and treated the potteryfaced Hosea Parker with such an affectation of respect that, while it did not deceive

Bennett, convinced the missionary that Joseph Herrera, whom he at first considered a lost man being a

Papist was about to be saved through his (Hosea's) instrumentality. And it suited the wily, handsome

Bonin Island Portuguese to let him think so, for it gave him further chances to talk to the girl, and deepen in

her the feeling of interest that he had aroused by his stories of the wild scenes and strange adventures he had

So it was no wonder that one evening, as the old barque slid softly along under her shortened canvas, and the

watch on deck lay about, looking up at the starspangled heavens, and the warm breath of the trade wind

She was just about to go below, and stopping for a moment at the companionway, held out her hand to the

"Goodnight, Mr Herrera. I wish I could stay on deck. It is such a lovely night."

His brown, sinewy, but shapely hand closed over hers, and his black eyes glowed and shone with passionate

"Goodnight," he said, speaking in a voice scarce above a whisper, but still holding the girl's hand; and then

In another moment she had fled below, and Jose Herrera, with flashing eyes and his white teeth showing in a

"Holy Saints above! She is mine now. And to get her I am ready for anything even to cutting the throat of

And then, as the ship rippled along over the starlit sea, he made up his plan of action. She did not intend to

leave her sister, at least not for a couple of years, and in a couple of years a great deal might happen she

might meet another man. From that evening Jose Herrera began to ingratiate himself with some of the crew.

He did not mean to resort to violence to attain the object he had in view, if it could be managed quietly; if it

could not well, so much the worse for those who might oppose him. He simply meant to run away from

the ship in one of her boats, and take Kate Trenton with him to his native land, the Bonin Islands. But to do

this he would need the assistance of some of the crew. In a day or so more the Kellet Passmore would be at

an island where he hoped to put his plan into execution. And so, never doubting for a moment his power over

Kate Trenton, he went about his work quite satisfied that the girl would come away with him when the time

"We are sure to call off Truk," he thought, "and it will be easy enough to get away in my boat to one of the

islands in Truk Lagoon, and hide there till the ship goes off without us. I don't think Amos Bennett would

care to come and look for me and four other armed men, all of whom would willingly cut his lean throat

Just as Amos Bennett went into his cabin to pick out the trade goods to send ashore in the boats, Mrs Parker

opened her cabin door and came out, followed by Kate Trenton and the Reverend Hosea.

"Waal, ladies, ef I was yew, I wouldn't," said the captain, who was busily engaged in digging out cakes of

tobacco from a small case with his pocketknife; "these here Loosap natives don't cotton much to strangers,

and ef anything onpleasant occurred, why, I should feel myself to blame fur lettin' yew go in the boats. Yew

see, ladies, these Loosap people air a very excitable lot, an' the least thing might make an onpleasantness

"Oh, Hosea, don't go," said Kate Trenton. "Mr Barrington, too, was telling me this morning that, unlike most

of the Caroline Islanders, these natives do not care for visits from strangers, and that when he lived here some

years ago, the whaleships that called for fresh provisions had great trouble in inducing the natives to sell

The Reverend Hosea, however, was not alarmed. Already he could see in the Society's magazine an account

stating how "the Reverend Hosea Parker, the earnest and intrepid missionary, had planted the Seed at Lsap,"

"It is my duty, Kate, and, besides that, I have long wished to see these people and give them the Light. This is

the island, too, that that unfortunate girl Nadee belongs to; perchance she may be here now, and"

Mrs Parker's mouth hardened suddenly at the mention of the name of Barrington's native wife, and she

"I am determined to go ashore. Both Kate and I would go mad, cooped up on board. If it is only to put my

foot on the beach for a moment, and then be capsized in the boat coming out, I would go."

"Waal, jest as yew please, ladies. If Mr Parker is willin', I don't object. Oh, is that you, Mr Barrington? Here's

the terbacker and other things. These here ladies are agoin' ashore with you an' Parson Parker."

"It is a bad landingplace, Mrs Parker," he said. "What the devil did the women want to come for?" he

"Is it?" she answered coolly. "Well, I'll take all risks. You don't look very pleased, Mr Barrington, at having

There was a sarcastic ring in the laugh that ended her speech, and Barrington was nettled, and showed it. He

was not pleased at the prospect, for two reasons: the first was that the women might get drenched going over

the reef; the second was that he did not want them to witness his meeting with his wife.

"Just as you please, Mrs Parker; but in addition to the chances of us getting a wetting in going ashore, and in

coming out loaded up with turtle and pigs, I don't think you will like the people; they are very reserved and

"Oh, what a shame!" said Miss Trenton, puckering up her dark eyebrows; "and I so wanted to see them. I am

Barrington felt somewhat ashamed. Kate Trenton's innocent eyes, the reflex of her pure and innocent mind,

always did make him feel ashamed when by any chance the talk turned upon native women. He thought that

her sister disliked him strongly, and had given her a pretty bad account of him; else why did Mrs Parker so

pointedly avoid speaking to him when they met on deck? So, with something like a woman's blush, he

The second mate turned sharply and looked at the missionary's wife. She was sitting in the captain's chair,

leaning her cheek upon one hand. There was a curious, defiant glitter in her eyes as she met his glance.

"Dn her!" he said, under his breath. "She wants to show me up again before her sister. Why the

"As you say, Mrs Parker, few are so handsome as Nadee and few or none are as good."

The colour died away on Mrs Parker's face, and then, with a little sneering laugh, she rose and went into her

Something made Kate Trenton lift her honest brown eyes to Barrington's, and then she impulsively held out

her hand to him. He took it quickly, pressed it, and then raising his hat to her, went up on deck.

"Dear little woman," he said to himself. "I do believe she'd meet Nadee and not think she was such a terribly

bad lot after all. By God! if I thought Herrera meant to harm Kate Trenton, I'd spoil his beauty!"

In the Reverend Hosea's cabin his wife was savagely drying her eyes with her handkerchief when Kate

"Are you ready, Helen?" she began; and then she stopped, and tears of sympathy filled her eyes.

"Nothing," she answered brusquely; "only that I'm a fool, and only knew it thoroughly just now. Let us go by

all means. I don't care a fig about the heathen, but I do want to go ashore, out of this miserable, stuffy cabin,

"'Tis a whaleship, my mother, for when she lifts to the swell of the ocean I can see her many boats hoisted

Nadee, standing out in front of the russetthatched highpeaked house in the native village, leant her lithe

young figure against the bole of a coconut tree, and shading her eyes against the glare of the morning sun

with her little brown hands, looked steadily once more out eastward over the sea towards the ship.

"Come thou inside, child," answered a voice, tremulous with age. "Who but thee, O one with little thought,

would stand out there in the blazing sun to look at a ship? What hath the ship to do with thee?"

The girl laughed joyously at the question of old Tariva, whom she called mother, but who was really her

grandmother, and the only one of her blood alive; then she answered, still shading her eyes as she watched

"It may be, mother, that my husband cometh. Who can tell? And twenty and five months have come and gone

"Foolish child! And does it take thee five moons to learn that he is a liar and thou a fool?"

The girl's head drooped, her cloud of wavy hair fell around her face, and she worked one of her bared feet

slowly to and fro in the heated sand and broken coral pebble on which she stood. For a minute or so she made

no answer, and then slowly walked towards the house, passed the opened door of thatch, and disappeared.

Within, an old woman with wrinkled face and snowwhite hair falling in ragged tails down her brown and

naked back, was seated crosslegged before a tiny fire of charcoal. With one hand she fanned the coals, and

with the other stirred some liquid that bubbled and frothed in a halved coconut shell set in among the embers.

Softly but steadily the old grandam flapped the broad fan she held in her hand, and peered anxiously into the

"Did I not tell her so . . . Jaki is but as other white men. And the twenty months have passed and gone, and

five more . . . Guk! the girl is a fool. He hath wearied of her and will return not."

She lifted out the shell and set it beside her, for the heat had now began to crack and warp it; then taking up

another one from a number that lay beside her, she set it among the coals, and poured back into it the liquid

"Aye, they be all alike those white men Ah, it boileth again . . . Nadee, come thou and see to it. Thy eyes are

No answer came from the girl, who, though the old dame knew it not, was seated with her back to the

"Nadee," again called old Tariva querulously, "hast not yet tired of baking thyself in the fierce sun, looking at

the ship. Come, child, and see the oil I have made, scented with nudu flowers and sandalwood. Dost think 'tis

A sob answered her. "Nay, mother. But set it aside for a little time; for my eyes are dimmed with the glare of

the sun, and I fear the smoke of thy fire. And here, in the shade, it is cool for me to sit awhile."

The old woman's lined and wrinkled face softened, and she glanced towards the side of the house from

"Thou liest, child. 'Tis not the sun that hath hurt thy eyes; 'tis the foolish tears for the man who hath cast thee

"Say not that, my mother," and the girl's voice, soft and low as it sounded, trembled as she caught her breath,

"for though 'tis so long since, not one ship have we seen at Lsap since he sailed. And it may be this one . . .

"Why?" The old woman laughed scornfully. "Because of the wife of the Christman at Ponape the woman

with the hair like the yellow of the setting sun. Dost think thy beauty can compare with that of the

The girl sprang to her feet, and in another moment she stood in the doorway with her hands clenched.

"'Tis a lie, old Tariva! Thou art old and foolish. The wife of the Christman was nought to my white man."

The old woman's thin lips parted in a contemptuous smile, and her white teeth showed. Still fanning the

"Why was it, then, that after the Christman and his wife came to Ponape, that he went away from thee?"

"He was wearied, he said, of the dull days, and longed to go out upon the ocean again in one of the ships that

seek for whales. For that is the work that he hath done from his boyhood. And how could he take me with

"Tah! lies, lies, all lies. Are there not many white men in these islands whose wives voyage to and fro with

them in ships? Did not Siria, the daughter of Larik, and Nili, mine own sister's child she who is now dead

"True, mother," said Nadee steadfastly, "but, see, those were trading ships. But never a woman goeth away

"Oh, foolish child, to so believe in one of strange blood. If he so cared for thee, why did he weary of thee so

"Not so. It was because that he was poor and had but little goods wherewith to buy oil and pearl shell and

tortoise shell, as did the other white men on Ponape. And so, because that the days were dull to him he told

me he desired to sail for two years in a whaleship, so that he would get money in plenty; and then would he

return with all the things he desired, and live with me always. But the beautiful Christwoman had naught to

The old woman lifted the shell she was tending from off the fire, and brushing off the dust from the mat on

"Come hither, little one, and sit by old Tariva thy mother's mother, the only one that is left to thee of all

Still with the troubled look in her lustrous eyes, Nadee, with another glance seaward at the white sails of the

ship, stepped inside, and sat down beside the old woman, who, drawing the girlish figure to her wrinkled old

"Only thou art left to me, little one thou of all that were once so many; and because that I am so old, and

will soon be with the silent ones, and thou wilt be alone, do I wish to tell thee of some things."

The girl's rounded arm encircled the old dame's skinny neck, and her little hand stroked her white locks, the

while she laid her cheek, so young and full and tender, against her grandam's lined and furrowed brow.

THERE was none to hear them talk. Save the old woman and the girl, the rest of the few people in the little

village were away at work in their plantations or out fishing in the lagoon. Outside, the quiet of the palm

grove was scarce broken even by the rustling of the breeze that swayed their branches to and fro. Sometimes,

on the white blaze of shimmering beach that came to within a few fathoms of the open door of old Tariva's

house, a swift black shadow would sweep by as a frigate bird skimmed past, flying low down over the beach

ere he took his mounting flight seaward to plunge with deadly aim and cruel beak into the blue waters beyond

So, in silence, and still caressing the aged face, Nadee waited till the timeworn old Tariva chose to speak;

"Turn thy back to the sea, little one. Let not the ship trouble thy mind yet awhile. When I have said all that

which is within me, then, if thou carest to still look across the searim for him who will never come, so be it,

The girl faced round with a strange, wondering look in the depths of her great soft eyes. What was it old

Tariva had to say? Thrice since the day that they had returned to Lsap to await the coming back of her white

husband, had her grandam spoken to her of Railik, the son of the chief of Lsap, who desired her for his wife,

and each time had Nadee, covering her face with her hands, shaken her head and said: "I will wait. The

And although old Tariva had given her some bitter words for her folly, yet she had not sought to force the

girl's choice. Railik, fierce and turbulent as he was, dared not seize her and carry her off; for old Tariva was

ejon, a strong witch, and had power to cause his limbs to wither and perish, so that the skin would cleave to

the bone and make him ugly to look upon in the eyes of all men, if he tried to win the girl by force against her

But yet and Nadee, the white man's wife, knew it well old Tariva favoured his suit, and though since

that third time she spoke not again of the lying, faithless white men to her, she was for ever talking of the

skill and cleverness in all things of Railik, he whom of all the young men on Lsap was worthy by his father's

A minute had passed, and yet the old woman had not spoken. She had placed her bony, clawlike hands upon

the girl's smooth and rounded shoulders, and her keen old eyes were bent upon Nadee's in a strange, wild

Presently there came to them a sound, as of the strong voices of men, made faint by distance.

"Heed it not, my Nadee," said old Tariva, in a low, mechanical voice, her eyes still fixed upon the girl's face;

Breathing so that her bared bosom rose and fell in quick, panting strokes, and with eyes filled with terror,

"What is it, O my mother, that maketh thee look so strangely upon me. Thy eyes are as two moons shining

through the blackness of the darkest night, and fill me with fear. Have I done aught wrong, and art thou about

As she faintly whispered the last words her eyes grew dim, misty, and slumberous.

"Nadee!" and the quavering tones of Tariva's voice became strong and harsh as the call of the frigatebird,

"wake, child! There, see, my beloved look now into old Tariva's eyes; only do I cast ejon on those whom I

"Aye, my mother; but look not again with thy eyes into mine, for then my soul goeth out into darkness, and

A faint smile crossed the thin, old lips, and patting the girl's knee, she said in soft, purring tones:

"Fear not, my little bird. Strong am I to cast spells for good and evil over men and women only against the

rebelli (white people) am I powerless. And it is because that my ejon is of no avail against the white man that

I now sit here and plead for thee to lay well to thy mind that which thou must know."

"Mother," and Nadee bent her head low down upon the old dame's lap, "would'st thou harm my white

"Nay, child. For though I hate the rebelli, whether they be shipmen or Christmen, yet would I bring thy

husband back to thee, child of my child, and last of my race, ere I go out to the spirit land."

A savage light leapt into the old woman's eyes, and her white, even teeth snapped together like the jaws of a

"Hate them! Aye, that do I. Would that I could live to see them wither and perish, and be swept away as we

of the seagirt lands have withered and perished before them! Long, long ago, when my hair was as black,

and my bosom as full and round as thine, my people were a great people, for, as thou knowest, my father was

a great man on Ponape, and the land he ruled stretched from Jakoits on the north to Metalanien, near unto the

strange stone houses that were built by the Unknown Men. He it was who sailed in two great canoes to this

little island of Lsap, a twenty days' journey, and slew half the men, and would have slain all; but that his eyes

were taken with the beauty of my mother, who, as she fled along this beach now before us, fell, and would

have been thrust through, only that my father beat back the bloodied hands of those who pursued her. And so,

because she pleased him, he spared the lives of all those men of Lsap who still lived, and took her to wife.

"Aye, child," answered Tariva, who was speaking of those olden days with a set purpose, and noting how

eagerly Nadee listened; "those were days when the quick, hot blood of youth ran lusty and strong in my

father's veins, and save for the two or three white sailors who dwelt under the protection of T'Nanakin, the

king of Jakoits, we of Ponape knew naught of the rebelli. Brave men, though, were those white men, for

sometimes when a ship lay becalmed, they led our people out in the dead of night and slew all on board, and

The girl shuddered as she caught the fiery gleam and sparkle in old Tariva'ssunken eyes, but yet listened

"And then the days and months and years went by, till there came to Metalanien the first of the Christmen,

in a whitepainted ship. Well would it have been had my father and T'Nanakin, the king of Jakoits, done unto

this ship as they had done unto others, but the ejon of the Christman was too strong, and he fooled my father

"In this way, child. All men love to hear of that which is strange and new; and this Christman told my father

cunning lies of a mangod who was greater than all the gods of Ponape, and who had sent him, the cunning

Christman, to Ponape, to tell my father to forswear the old gods and follow the god of the Christman."

"But little, mother. 'Twas long ago, when the beautiful Christwoman the wife of the Christman, whom

my husband called a meddling fool came to our house with her husband and talked with mine. Something

they said to him of myself and the wrath of the ChristGod it was that angered him, and though he spoke

softly because of the yellowhaired woman, who sat by me with her hand clasped around mine, yet he was

hot with anger against the meanlooking man who said the Christ had sent him to save me from perishing.

"'Go,' he said, speaking in the tongue of the white man, 'thou to thy trade, and leave me to mine. Come not

here to me in mine own house and seek to poison the heart of my wife against me. She is to me my wife by

the custom of the land, and I want no man such as thee to come between us.' And then the woman rose and

bade me farewell, and said to the Christman, her husband: 'Leave them. Why should we seek to make

trouble between them?' So, though they came again to my husband's house, the woman's husband spoke no

more to mine of the ChristGod and the lake of fire into which He casts His enemies."

"Ahe!" resumed the old woman, "'Twas that, the great sea of fire which is in the bowels of the earth, that

made the heart of T'Nanakin turn white, and he became eaten up with the fear of the ChristGod. And day by

day the power of the head Christman on the Christship grew stronger and stronger. One day it came about

that T'Nanakin and my father and other chiefs went to visit the ship, and the next day two of them were

seized with an illness from which many of the shipmen had died. T'Nanakin, who loved these men, went to

the Christwizard and besought him to save his men. And see, my child, how silly are some men and how

clever others: for this wizard soon put terror in the heart of T'Nanakin, and said

"'If these men die it is the will of the great ChristGod, who hath sent me to tell thee to cast away thy gods of

wood and worship Him. Beware, O chief, and delay not, lest something terrible befall thee, and the lake of

"The two men died, and then in every house in every village some one was seized by the strange illness from

the Christship, and many hundreds died. And then T'Nanakin with his chief humbled himself to the

Christwizard, and said: 'Thy gods are greater than mine. Let this sickness go away from my people, and I

will do as thou wishest I will be a Christman.' Then the white wizard and three other wizards who were

with him rejoiced greatly, and made much of T'Nanakin, and gave him many presents, and clothed him with

new black garments, and a high black covering for his head, such as is worn by these Christmen in their

own country. In two days all of his people swore faith to the ChristGod; but my father and his people did

not, for they had heard of the sickness, and no one of them would go near the white men. Then T'Nanakin,

who had cast away his father's gods for the new faith, sent word down saying: 'Come up and be a

Christman, lest thou and thy people be seized with a deadly illness and die, and be cast into a lake of red

"So T'Nanakin and my father quarrelled, and one night, when all in our village lay asleep, the canoes of

T'Nanakin crept down and killed all that would not be slaves to him and the white wizard, and then, we who

"For two moons T'Nanakin's men sought out and slew all those opposed to the new faith, and no smoke arose

in our country save that which came from the burning houses of my father's people; for we fled to the woods

all that were left of us and lived in hiding. Then came the time when many died of hunger, and Kanka,

my father, and all the men who were with him died under the knives of T'Nanakin's men, who had found out

our refuge. And then my mother, taking me with her, fled with some few other women and children, to the

little island called Pakin, close to the mainland; and there we lived till I was taken to wife by a man of Pakin,

and there thy mother was born to me. She, too, like myself, was taken to wife by a man of Pakin. At thy birth

she died, and with her last words besought me to take thee to this land of Lsap, where we would be well cared

for by those of our blood. But I lived on at Pakin, till both my husband and thy father were dead, and thou

wert a grown girl. Then came this Jaki of thine, who took us to live with him at Ponape. And I know he will

never come back to thee; so wait no longer, my child, but take Railik for thy husband. He is a clever man, and

"See, child, there is yet another thing. Thou sayest that the fairfaced white woman, the wife of the

dogfaced Christman, is nought to thy husband. Now I, because I am very old, know many things, and I tell

thee, foolish one, that if she be nought to him, he was much to her. And it was because she looked at him

with her eyes like the blue sea, and made him ashamed of thee, that he wearied of thee and went away."

"Nay, weep not, little one," went on old Tariva mercilessly; "what does it matter? Thou hast no child for men

to point at and jeer and say: "See the child of the white man who fooled its mother.' And yet it is hard for one

"Nay, mother. He may not come back to me; but not because of another woman. He may be dead."

"Thou fool! Didst thou not see that in less than a year after he had gone, that the white woman sickened and

pined for him, and then followed him to his own country in the whitepainted ship? Is it not true?"

Old Tariva laughed contemptuously. "'Twas but a trick. She cares not for her husband, and I have seen her

turn her face from him when he spoke to her. 'Tis thy white man she loves. Now listen, child, to me. I tell

thee that by this time she hath killed the dullfaced Christwizard, and is wife to thy white man in her own

She ceased and looked at the bowed figure of Nadee, who had buried her face in the old dame's lap, and was

Tariva, muttering to herself, stroked the black waves of hair tenderly, and waited. She had won, and Nadee,

the child of her heart, would forget this false white man and marry Railik, and then she, old Tariva, would

have given to her all that land on Lsap, which was hers of right, for had it not belonged to her mother in the

olden days? Suddenly the sobs ceased, and Nadee rose to her feet and went to the door. For a moment or two

she looked out over the blue expanse of ocean that lay before her teardimmed eyes; but the ship had gone;

she had passed round the south horn of the reef, and was hidden from view for the time. Then, with a smile

"It shall be as thou desirest, my mother. I am indeed a fool. When it pleases thee, take me to Railik's house."

Then she stepped out, and with a choking sob threw herself down on the grassy plot at the back of old

WHEN within a mile or so of the principal village of the main island, the Kellet Passmore backed her

mainyard, and the two boats pushed off from her side, the lanternjawed skipper calling out to Herrera to

get back as quickly as possible, as the winds showed signs of dying away, and he was suspicious of an

"There's a darned big swell rollin' in too, naow," he added; "an' I ain't too dreadful anxious to keep foolin'

In Herrera's boat were the two ladies, the Reverend Hosea, and the usual crew; in Barrington's, himself and

the crew only, and a box containing the trade goods for barter with the natives.

For some ten or twenty minutes the boats pulled side by side, until they were within a few hundred yards of

the reef, then Barrington's drew ahead. There was not much of a sea on, but the passage through the break in

the reef was very narrow, and as Barrington knew the place well, his boat was to go first.

"Look, Miss Trenton," said the mate, pointing to the white line of beach in front of them, "take your first

view of a South Sea Island village, and see the natives swarming down to the beach to meet us."

Kate, with her eyes dancing with excitement, answered him with a bright smile, and then gave a little scream.

"Oh, Helen, look at Mr Barrington's boat!" The second mate's boat had just swept over the reef, bow down in

front of a roller, and in the midst of a seeth of white foam and wild cries from the swarm of natives on the

beach, she landed right in their midst. Herrera, with a quick look astern, waited for another sea to come,

determined to go in on top of it, instead of waiting for a lull, and pulling in quietly. He saw that there was a

clean run in once he got over the edge of the reef, and he wanted to show Kate Trenton that Barrington was

At a sign from Herrera the crew shipped the oars and took out broadbladed native paddles Barrington's

The five paddles struck into the water, and the light boat sprang forward in front of the advancing sea. In

another ten seconds, with the two women and Hosea holding tightly to each other in terrified silence, and

Herrera straining at the steeroar, she was darting like an arrow through the water, in front of the boiling,

Suddenly, amidst the wild rush and bubble of the snowwhite spume that frothed past the gunwales with

lightning speed, Herrera uttered a savage oath; right ahead of him lay a round knob of coral, just showing its

pink and blue top above the surface of the water. With a fierce strain at the steeroar, he just shaved past it,

but in another moment the boat broached to, rolled over, and filled. Before a canoe could be launched,

Barrington, with a curse upon the mate's folly, had sprung back into his boat, and was pulling out to save

them. Already, though, the sweeping backwash had carried Herrera's boat and people out towards the edge of

"Pull, you sons of devils, pull!" said Barrington to his crew, as another sea came hurtling in with curling top;

But that sea nearly halffilled his boat, and by the time the crew had way on her again the capsized boat had

been swept down by the current right into the thundering surf that broke on the reef on each side of the

narrow passage. Fifty yards away he saw two of Herrera's crew and the Reverend Hosea, who was supported

by them, swimming down with the current towards shallower water, and further out in the rollers he saw the

black head of Herrera, keeping himself afloat, and holding up Kate Trenton. Then, almost at the same

moment he caught sight of the white face of the missionary's wife. She was clinging despairingly to a jagged

mass of coral, not five fathoms away; then another roaring sea leapt down upon his halffilled boat, and

"Two of you go to the mate, boys," he called to the Maori crew, "the rest of you stick to the boat," and then

he struck out towards the drowning woman, who, with the strength of despair, still clung to the coral boulder,

which was about two or three feet out of the water, and so saved her from being smothered by the seas which

rolled by on either side. Just as he reached her a roller, higher and swifter than the others, tore away her

weakening grasp, and holding her in his arms, they were buried beneath; when they came to the surface he

For nearly five minutes Barrington, with the blood welling from a fearful cut on his head, drifted seaward

with the woman. He knew the canoes would be along presently, for already, although strange noises filled his

brain from the blow he had received, and the blood blinded his eyesight, he could hear the cries of the natives

He had twined his left hand into the woman's hair, and held her in front of him as he struck out with his right.

Then, as he still partly drifted, partly swam seaward, away out from the sweep of the seas for they were

now beyond the reef with dulled brain and bloodfilled eyes, a thought ran through him that smote his

heart with a deadly chill. He knew he was bleeding badly, and that the sharks are quick to answer to the smell

Away out on the Kellet Passmore, Captain Amos Bennett, from the foretopsail yard, had seen Herrera's boat

broach to and fill, had seen Barrington's meet with a like fate, and had cursed all missionaries unto the tenth

"Waal, I'll be goldarned! Two boats capsized and ez like ez not stove in," and he threw his cigar down on to

the deck for'ard with another curse after it; "and perhaps some of my men injoored."

"Hope the women and the parson ain't hurt," said the fourth mate, who had just come up aloft, and stood

"Darned ef I care! their passages are paid," was the snorting reply; for the worthy Bennett although he

And, just then, as he gave orders for another boat to be lowered, the breeze died away so suddenly and

suspiciously that he hurried down below to look at the glass. He was back on deck in a minute.

"Never mind the boat, Mr Briggs. There's plenty of canoes to pick up the darned fools, and there's going to be

hl to pay in another five minutes here. Stand by the braces, and look spry we don't get caught aback. Darn

In another ten minutes the first puffs of the coming easterly struck the old barque. She heeled over; and then

as the first whistle of it passed away, stood up again on an even keel; but only for a few seconds, for the

Two hours later, under close reefed fore and maintopsails, she was running before the storm, with a sea like

"Guess we won't heave her to among these reefs between Loosap and D'Urville's Island, Mr Briggs. Let her

go as she is, an' we'll get under the lee of Truk until this darned easterly blows its guts out. Then I reckon

we'll hev to come back and pick up Mr Herrera an' Mr Barrington and them Gawspil folks."

And so, with the drone of the easterly singing through her cordage, and the swash of the mountain seas

swirling up against her weatherbeaten sides, the old whaler plunges and splashes westward, running dead

A SWARM of brown, halfnaked men and women rushed to the beach to meet the rescuing canoes, and as

they stood and waited, a savage, roaring gust swept through the dense palmgrove at their backs, and

whipped up great clouds of the white, clinging sand, and carried it far out seawards. "Haste, haste, my

children!" and Sru, the chief of Lsap, a great, broadshouldered native, naked save for his thick girdle of

banana fibre, sprang into the water and looked anxiously at the three canoes, as they sped shoreward in face

A wild cry went up from the assembled people as the first canoe swept in through the boiling surf and ran her

sharp bows upon the beach, and the wet and naked rowers sprang out; and Herrera, holding Kate Trenton in

Too exhausted to speak, he motioned to the women to take her; and then, staggering on his feet like a

drunken man, he sought to discover something of Barrington and the others; but a blinding stinging

rainsquall had obscured the two other canoes from view, and then he was half carried away by some natives

to the shelter of the chief's house, where the women had already taken Kate Trenton, and with kindly hands

In the second canoe were two of Herrera's men, for their boat had been hopelessly stove in, and after them

came Barrington's boat, "swum in" by natives and the rest of his crew; the third canoe was yet out amid the

tumbling breakers a quarter of a mile away, but showing up now and then a black spot amid the white seeth

"Ha!" cried Sru, "Railik, my son, hath cause to be last; for, see, there are yet three more of the rebelli

swimming in the shallow water near to his canoe the current hath swept them far down. Even now do I see

And away out in the canoe, Railik, with his long black hair streaming out to the gale, saw them, too, and

urged his men to paddle hard. Ten minutes before he had picked up Barrington and the missionary's wife; and

as a whiff of spray smote him fiercely in the face, he shook the water from his eyes and glanced down to see

if the woman was yet alive, as she lay in the bottom of the canoe with her head supported by a native boy. Up

for'ard, lying on his back with blood still flowing from his head, was Barrington. Presently he sought to rise,

"Nay, stay thou quiet, Jaki," said the native who paddled on the bow thwart, and whose feet were placed one

on each side of the white man's body; "try not to rise, for should I miss but one stroke of my paddle, then

Another sea swept by them with an angry hiss, and the canoe buried her outrigger deep down, and Railik,

with his left hand grasping the steeringpaddle, bent down and scooped out the water with a halfdozen

quick strokes of the wooden baler. Then in another minute the canoe shot alongside the three struggling men

two of Barrington's crew and the missionary, and Railik sprang overboard to the aid of Hosea Parker, who

was sinking. The missionary seemed to struggle with his rescuer, who soon reappeared without the white

A swarm of natives men, women, and children crowded round as Railik, panting hotly for his breath,

"Four, O father Sru three men and one woman. And see, he there who hath the bloodied face is Jaki

A sudden silence fell upon the crowd of natives, and Sru looked fiercely at, the prostrate figure of Barrington.

Then, muttering something in a savage undertone to his crew, the chiefs son, without another glance at the

people he had saved from death, strode away towards the village, and his father told those about him to carry

"Tend them well," he said, "for when the storm is ceased the ship will come back for them. So give them all

to eat and drink, and then in a little while, when their strength has come back, will I ask of this dog, Jaki, how

Held in the arms of a tall, slender, native girl, who looked pityingly down upon her trembling figure, Helen

A woman who stood close by pointed to a number of men who were helping Barrington up over the brow of

"Thy husband is there. He is badly hurt and like to die. Who art thou that speaks our tongue?"

And leading her by the hands, the girl and woman walked with her to the chief's house, and pointed to the

figure of Jack Barrington, who lay upon a mat, with some native women bandaging his head.

She stood over him for a moment trying to speak, but her voice failed her. At last she spoke.

"Thank God, Mr Barrington, you are alive! The natives tell me that my husband is badly hurt. Where is he?

No answer came, and then looking into the ghastly, pallid face of the man she loved, she forgot all, and,

Railik, speeding along through the groves of coconut and bananas, towards the dwelling of old Tariva, took

no heed of the crash and roar of the storm that now seemed to shake the island to its foundations. He knew

that even if the few people who lived in the village on the little island with Nadee and the old woman had left

it with the intention of seeing the boats land from the ship, they would have returned to their houses again in

the face of such a wild sea as was now breaking over the connecting reef that lay between their village and

the main island. No canoe could cross the lagoon now, and to walk round by way of the beach on the lee side

would take them many hours. So on he pushed, through the fastgathering darkness and the clashing and

tearing of the countless palm tops above him, the frightened shrieks of the sea birds, and the growling thunder

of the mighty seas, as they dashed against the barrier wall of coral rock to pour like cataracts along its level

Then, when he came within sight of the tiny village of four houses, he lay down in the darkness and waited.

One by one the fires were lighted in the houses, and then he caught a glimpse of Nadee as she passed out of

Springing to his feet, he glided through the swaying, windtossed palms, till he reached the back of the old

"Tariva," he called, "'tis I, Railik. Come thou outside, so that we may talk, for I be in haste."

In a few seconds he saw her figure coming towards him, her white hair blowing and whipping about her face

She took it in silence, and then they walked together till they reached a great nudu tree, behind the buttressed

"Now is the time come for thee, Tariva, to prove thy friendship to me, and give me Nadee."

"That would I have done long since, but the girl waited for her white husband; but, see, here do I show my

friendship for thee! Only but a little time since we talked together, and tomorrow did I mean to bring her to

"Then why, O Railik, dost thou come here to fool me? How can I give her to thee if Jaki hath come? Dost,

"Mother, listen. But little time have I to talk, even of such a matter as this, for I must haste back. See, now,

and then tell me if I am not wise. Two boats came from the ship, and both were overpowered by the seas and

"Then I and four others in my canoe, and Sirra and Tasa in their canoes, went out to them; and it came about

that I saw that two of the rebelli were washed outside the reef apart from the others, and lo, they were a man

and a woman and the man was Jaki. Just was he, and the woman with him, about to sink, when we

"She was as one dead. And I, mother, when I saw the face of the white man, would have let him drown, but

those with me said: 'Nay, hurt him not. Dost thou not see 'tis the husband of Nadee?' So, though I would have

struck my paddle into his brain, I feared to do so. But, tell me, hath not the Christwoman I have heard thee

"Aye," said the old woman quickly, clutching his wrist; "and was it she who was with him?"

"And was not the man her husband, the Christwizard little and dark, with a face ugly to look upon?"

Railik laughed. "See how I remember these things that thou hast told me. Now, as Jaki and the woman lay in

the canoe I knew she was the Christwoman thou hast so often told me of, and then I had no wish to do him

harm, for I knew that she was wife to him, even as thou hast told Nadee she would be."

"Ah," and the old woman ground her teeth, "the lying white man! Why didst thou not cast them over again?"

"So we turned shoreward," went on Railik, "and as we rose to the sea I saw Sirra and his men take up another

woman and a man from the sea, even as I had done; and as we crossed over the reef we saw three more white

men struggling in the shallow water between the reef and the shore. And when we came to them I saw that

"Aye, the Christman. And then I knew that the woman who lay in the canoe was not wife to Jaki, and while

the thought of Nadee was hot within me, and my men helped in the two shipmen, I sprang into the sea as if

"And took him by the hair and dived with him, and struck his head against a rock beneath, so that he

died quickly. This did I because I told those with me that Jaki had now a new wife."

"That tomorrow thou shalt bring Nadee and show her the white woman and Jaki sitting together in my

father's house, and say: 'See, thy white man with his new wife the Christwoman from Ponape.'"

"Good!" said the old dame, pulling his face down to hers and embracing him. "Now go, and leave what else

THE storm had nearly ceased, and although the wind was yet high and the branches of a hundred thousand

graceful palms thrashed and bent and swayed to its still whistling note, overhead the blue sky was unspecked

Kate Trenton awoke as she lay upon her couch of mats in the house of Sru, the chief, and looking out through

the opened window, up into the starspangled heavens, thanked God that her life had been spared, and that

She rose softly and looked at the three sleeping figures that lay near her. That which was nearest was her

sister, and Kate, taking a rude oil lamp in her hand, sank on her knees beside her, and with tears welling fast

to her eyes scanned the pale face of the sleeping woman, and then touched lovingly the bright hair that

"Sleep, sleep, dear Helen," she murmured, and then she moved silently away again to the little window, and

gazed out past the wildly tossing plumes of the coconut grove that encompassed the house, and at the rearing,

leaping billows that thundered with a dull and savage symphony upon the black line of reef half a mile away.

"Poor Hosea," she said, and then her tears fell fast. "He had so often said that he would be proud and willing

to give his life, if need be, for his work." And she turned away from the window with a sob, and covered her

For nearly an hour the girl lay upon her couch of mats till the light of the lamp paled in the silent house, and

the grey light of the coming tropic dawn stole through the serried boles and plumed crowns of the countless

cocopalms. Drawing over her shoulders, with a strange, happy feeling in her heart, a seaman's heavy

peajacket, which she had found placed beside her couch, and knew was Herrera's, she walked noiselessly

over to the wicker door, stepped outside, and sat down upon a great flat slab of coral.

"He loves me! he loves me!" she kept saying to herself, with a whispering, joyous laugh, "and I love him.

A step on the gravel made her look up, and the man who was in her heart stood beside her, with his black

"It is very cold, Mr Herrera," she murmured, "and I have your coat. But I am going in again now. I only came

She stopped, and then as she was about to rise he sank at her feet, and seizing her hands in his, covered them

"Kate, Kate! Do not go just yet. I love you. See, sweet one, there is no one here to hear us. Do you think that I

have been sleeping? No! I have been lying there beside Barrington watching you, and waiting for the moment

when I could come to you and tell you that I love you. Love you, Kate! Holy Saints forgive me! but yesterday

I cursed the poor padre I thought he would come between us. And I, because you are all the world to me,

Trembling, partly with joy and partly with fear at his passionate words, Kate Trenton let him draw her to him,

"See, Kate," and the mate's voice shook as he turned her face to him and looked into her honest eyes, "I, Jose

Herrera, swear to you by the soul of my mother, and my belief in Heaven and Hell, that if you will marry me,

I, too, will become one of your faith that would I do if my mother rose from her grave and cursed me."

"Jose," and there was a happy trill in her voice, "I am so glad . . . because I love you."

Then, as the sound of footsteps sounded near them on the pebbly path, she glided away from him inside the

house, and the first mate of the Kellet Passmore, picking up the jacket she had dropped, walked round to the

A white hand and arm came out of the gloom of the still darkened room, and Kate Trenton's fingers touched

Fortyeight hours before Jose Herrera had talked with his boat's crew on board the barque, and had promised

"God is good to me," he said, piously crossing himself. "Two days ago I was ready to kill the poor padre, and

run the lives of five men into danger on a long boat voyage. And now the poor padre is dead, and there is no

Then, as he had no tobacco to smoke, he sat down on the cool sand watching the paling stars, and wondering

"Dios!" he said, clasping his small, sinewy brown hands around his knees, "Kate and I may be married in a

month from now if we touch at Guam and touch there we shall, if I do have to run the ship ashore in the

WITH the first red streaks of sunrise through the palmgrove came the murmur of voices and the tramp of

naked feet about the pebbled path that led to the chief's house, and Helen Parker awoke to her sister's kiss.

"Kate," and the pale face lightened up as she drew the girl to her bosom, "I have had such a long sleep, and

feel so well and strong," and then her eyes wandered over to where Barrington lay, with Jose Herrera sitting

"Die? Silly Helen! No, dear; but Mr Herrera says that the cut in his head is something terrible, and that he

will be very weak for a long time from loss of blood," and then Kate laid her cheek to Helen's; "but we will

nurse him in turns, dear. I would be so miserable if he died, Helen, for Jose I mean Mr Herrera told me

that not only did he save your life, but his and mine, too, for before swimming out to you, he told two of his

Helen pressed her hand, and again she glanced at the pallid features of the sleeping man, and Jose Herrera

"Helen," and Kate's arm stole round her waist, "don't weep, dear. It was Hosea's wish to die at his post. It is

Helen Parker shuddered, and then a hot flush dyed her face; she had not been thinking of her dead husband as

The tramping sound of naked feet on the paths around the house increased, and Herrera rose and came over to

"The native women are bringing baskets of food and placing them outside," he said to Kate; "they are very

anxious to come inside and talk to you both, but Sru, the chief, has forbidden them to make any noise. He

thinks you are still asleep. Would you like to come outside for a little? They are getting us something to eat

Moving very quietly so as not to awaken Barrington, Herrera opened the door, and Helen and Kate followed

him outside, and faced the crowd of natives who sat awaiting them. A little apart from the rest, seated on a

mat fringed with scarlet parrots' feathers, was Sru, the chief; behind him his wife, and Railik his son.

A murmur of approval broke from the people as Helen stepped across to the chief, and spoke to him.

"We thank thee, Sru of Lsap, that thou and thy people have saved us from death."

"Sit thou there, Christwoman, thou and the other woman, and the darkfaced shipman," and the chief

pointed to where, among the rest of the whaling gear saved from the boats, the four line tubs were placed side

by side; "sit thou there, and while my women get ready food for thee to eat, let us talk."

They sat down and waited for him to speak, and Herrera, who, although he could not speak the language,

knew by the chief's manner that something was wrong, looked anxiously around for his and Barrington's

Suddenly, with a fierce scowl at Helen, the chief raised his huge, brawny arm, and with his open palm struck

The rude, rough words, so different from what she expected, startled and alarmed her.

"Why such angry words to those who have been cast upon the beach by the waves, O Sru."

"'Tis to thee alone I speak, thou stealer of women's husbands. See," and he sprang to his feet, and pointed to

the oars, lances, and harpoons that lay piled together by the tubs, "there be all the things that were taken from

the boats. Now listen, and make the darkfaced shipman by thy side understand my words. Presently, when

ye have eaten and drank, shall my people fill the one boat that is unbroken with food and water, and then

shall ye all get to the boat, and go away from my land, and seek the ship again. But the white man Jaki shall

Utterly at a loss to account for the chief's angry words and inhospitable manner, Helen answered him

"Why to me alone, O Sru of Lsap, is thy anger turned? And how am I a stealer of women's husbands?"

An agony of shame for the moment overcame her. She knew how prone the native mind was to suspicion,

And then, in as few words as possible, she told how it was that she and her husband came to take a passage in

the whaler, and then asked the chief if he did not know that her husband was dead. He listened to the end, and

"What lies are these? Are we fools? Is not every one that was in the boats alive and well but Jaki? Thou dost

but say this for fear of thy life, thou cunning Christwoman. Old Tariva knoweth of thy love for the husband

For a minute she was too dazed to speak, and then a young girl who sat directly in front of her took up a small

"Thou stealer of women's husbands!" she said with a mocking laugh, and then came a chorus of gibes and

Herrera, with a red gleam in his eyes, sprang up, and in another moment Helen had fainted in her sister's

"For God's sake, don't ask me now, Kate! Mr Herrera, we must leave the island at once; our lives are in peril

else. The chief says that as soon as we have eaten something we must go away, and that he will provision the

"No, no," said Helen hurriedly. "I know the cause of it all. A fierce old woman named Tariva, who was once

at Ponape, and hates the missionaries bitterly, has poisoned his mind against us me in particular. We must

go, Mr Herrera. I know our danger. She is a terrible woman, and would have great influence over these Lsap

natives." And then she added in calmer tones: "Leave me here, please. I cannot face those women again, but

they will offer no harm to either Kate or you. Go, Mr Herrera, I beg of you, and see to the boat."

The mate, with a sympathetic grasp of her hand, turned to go. "Do not fear, Mrs Parker. We will be safe

enough in the boat, and even if we miss the ship we can run down to Truk, with this wind, in thirty hours."

The moment Herrera stood outside, two of his boat's crew met him, and he learned that the four Maoris had

told them that they had been asked by the natives to remain on the island; but that all the others, except

"All right, boys, let the Maoris stay we don't want them. Where are Pedro and Tom, and the

"Down at the boat stowing her with baskets of food. She's about a mile farther down on the beach."

"Very well, go down and lend them a hand. Here, take the oars down to the boat, and pull up here as quick as

Picking up the oars the men walked quickly away along the beach, and Herrera saw with astonishment that

there was not a native about. They had all gone into their houses, and seemed to show the most utter

He sat down on one of the line tubs, and presently Kate Trenton, her face pale with excitement, joined him.

"Helen is coming presently," she said, and she sat beside him and placed her trembling hand in his.

Slowly Barrington opened his eyes and gazed stupidly around him. A raging thirst and a sound of some one

sobbing had roused him from his deathlike sleep, and in a faint voice he called for water.

"Thank God!" murmured Helen, and raising his head on her arm, she placed a young coconut to his lips.

He drank, and then with a heavy sigh sank back on the rolled up mat that formed his pillow, and closed his

She knelt beside him for a few moments with her hands clasped tightly together, and then bent down and

Then came the sound of the crunching gravel outside, and the doorway of the house was darkened by two

figures, but she heard nor saw them not, as she sobbed out her heart over the unconscious man.

"See, Nadee, see thy white husband and the Christwoman for whom he hath cast thee off!" and then old

Tariva slipped a knife into the girl's hand. As Nadee sprang forward Helen raised her face; and then the knife

A wild, shrieking laugh made Kate Trenton and Jose Herrera spring to their feet, to see a hideous old woman

with long, snowwhite hair, standing at the door of the chiefs house, and the next moment a young girl, as

Again that awful screeching laugh rang out, and the hag took Nadee by the hand and led her out in full view

"See, O men of Lsap, see the red hand of Nadee! Hold thou it up, my grandchild, my wooddove, and let

them see the blood of the Christwoman who stole thy lover from thee with her strong witchcraft."

At sunset the whaleboat, with Kate's head pillowed against her lover's bosom, was fifty miles away; and