s, it was absolutely overwhelming. When everything he possessed was swept away, and with it the routine that for three years had kept him

e a tiny hut of cocoanut branches, a clumsy canoe good enough to fish with, and nets from the sinnet she taught him how to twist out of cocoanut husks. She even sent him back to work in the plantation, for the bananas at least could be saved, and there was a well of sprouting yams and som

Fetuao's brothers, Tua and Anapu, Mele her uncle, Lapongi the orator, and a dozen others, some of them boys not yet tattooed. In

e orator, "for every man now is needed

ual, turned

carry water for the wounded, thou with t

the food that was handed him, he looked across the bay, now silvering i

as the missionary boy king, unsafe even under the guns of Britain and America, took his precautions against a night attack. After the stillness of Oa there was something confusing in the stir and bustle of Mataafa's big camp-in the constant passing of armed men, the change of guards, and the rousing choruses around the fires. There was, besides, an atmos

up skulkers from the rear. Like some untried actress bringing down her house, she was overborne with her own success; and the more she was praised the more extravagantly and unflinchingly she exposed herself. Under the stress of those fierce emotions her character in every way underwent a change for the worse. In war time, death, always in the air, seems to annihilate with its dark shadow all the bonds t

nt and cause her to passionately mourn the unknown soldier dead. This sentiment, this instinct, is a thousandfold intensified on the bloody field itself. The pang when

spark of interest in the struggle; his thoughts were forty miles away in that ruined home, with his plants, and trees, and shrubs, his cow, and his chickens. What victory could give them back? What terror had a

d whistle to him derisively and shout, "Come 'ere!" secure in the chronic absent-mindedness that had become a joke to them all. When he answered, as he always answered, "Eh, what?" and raised his vacant, moody face, there would be an outburst of laughter, in which he himself joined with a m

jeopardy, though barricades were thrown up in the streets and three hundred men landed from the ships. A desperate night attack on the main guard at the Tivoli Hotel betrayed the weakness of the whites to friends and foes alike, and redoubled the anxiety of the admiral and captains. It was plain that no decisive blow could be struck pending the arrival

a couple of machine guns, was to form the center of the little army, while the native brigade on either wing was to advance simultaneously, lap round and outflank the Mataafas. This operation, covered by a terrific bombardment f

rs exhorting them to remember their wrongs and die fighting. These old men, white-haired, scarred with the wounds of bygone battles, their wrinkled hands clasping the staves on which they leaned, never winced as the shells whistled above their heads, nor abated by a hair's breadth their tone of strident warning and encouragement. At such a distance, and against a target six hundred feet above the sea level, the men-of-war made poor practice an

ry among the thronging warriors as any castaway in mid-ocean, and his patient, stolid, inexpressive face, grown older in a month by a dozen years, was the only one which failed to reflect the coming conflict. Fetuao, on the contrary, was on fir

the first murderous crash it seemed as though nothing human could withstand them, and the blue-jackets, dotted here and there in the grass, raised an exultant yell, and some even sprang up in anticipation of the call to charge. But the men that worked the guns had to stand exposed and helpless before a fire more galling than their own. They began to drop, and those who were unhurt disconcertedly turned and ran. A couple of officers sprang out of th

ch an one killed and such an one wounded. Dodging the bullets, Fetuao flitted about with water for the parched fighters, passing the news and rolling cigarettes for such of the wounded as were not too far gone to care for them. Occasionally she ferreted out a trembling wretch in the rear and drove him t

e battle reached its deadliest stage, more falling in those terrible minutes than during the whole previous course of the action. There was no shouting, no cheering, but with clenched teeth each man held his place and panted for the supreme moment that should spell either victory or rout. That moment came with the bugle call to charge, when the whites, rising for the last time, flung themselves forward with bayonets fixed. On they came, crimson-faced, mouths open, British and Americans in a pellmell rush like a ra

bbed out with it right and left, with a strength, skill, and ferocity that nothing could withstand. He was fired at again and again; his ashen face was twenty times a target, once at so close a range that the powder burned his very skin. As the line swayed to and fro in that desperate final struggle, there was a hoarse cry against him, constantly repeated, of, "Shoot th

he was tumbling

uses they had burned, and the honest hearts they had broken! To hell with them! Besides, for the matter of that, he was feeling sort of sick himself-sort of numb and shivery-and he staggered like a drunken man as he went slowly back up to the wall. It was all he could do to straddle the blamed thing, and then it was only with the help of a wounded Samoan who took his hand. The Kanaka, dizzily seen through a kind of mist, was no

ITY OF TH

ng, the little capital of the Samoan group had been next door to dead. Picnics had been few; a heavy dust had settled on the floor of the public hall-a galvanized iron barn which social leaders could rent for six Chile dollars a night, lights included; the butcher's wedding, contrary to all expectation, had been st

nsul, expressed himself, "You can't g

surround himself with dusky impropriety. He played a straight social game, and lived up to the rules, even to party calls, and finger bowls on his cabin table. He was a tall, thin American of about forty-five, with floorwalker manners, grayish mutton-chop whiskers, and a roving eye. The general verdict of Apia was that he was "very superior." His superiority was apparent in his gentlemanly baldness, his openwork socks, his well-turned references to current events, his kindly and

d say, his bland tolerance falling like balm from heaven, and

it on you behind a counter, and sell you anything from a bottle of trade scent to a keg of dynamite. He never was so charming as when engaged in this exchange

et of safety matches, or a toothbrush. Indeed, apart from this invariable prodigality, his scale of prices was ridiculously low, and if you were a lady you could buy out the ship at half price. As for young Skiddy, the American consul, the bars in his case were lowered even more, and he was just asked to help himself; which young Skiddy did, though sparingly. Captain

es of thirty-eight Americans, not to speak of a thirty-ninth who was soon expected, over whom the young consul possessed extraordinary powers withheld from far higher posts in far more important countries. Young Skiddy, on a modest

e spare time on his hands, which, on the whole, he managed to get through with very tolerable enjoyment. But until the date of Captain Satterlee's arrival he had never had a friend, or at least so it seemed to him now in the retrospect. His official colleagues were out of the question-the standoffish Englishman, the sullen German, the grotesq

Not that his incidents were often humble. On the contrary, in his mysterious suggestive fashion he let it be inferred that his bygone part had been a great one. He would offer dazzling little peeps, and then shut the slide; a chance reference that would make his hearer gasp; the adroit use of a mighty name, checked by a sudden, "Oh, hold on-I'm saying more than I ought to!" You felt, somehow, that to have roused the interest of this powerful personage was to insure your own career. With a turn of hi

have the counterfeit of a Cecil Rhodes. We are not only willing to take people at their own valuation, but are ever ready to multiply that valuation by ten. Obtrude roman

. But to Skiddy every word he said was Gospel-true. He never doubted the captain for an instant. Life grew richer to him, stranger and more wonderful. It was like a personal dist

egardless of sex, creed, or nationality, acclaiming Satterlee to the skies, and vying among themselves for the privilege of entertaining him? Never, indeed, were there so many picnics, so many parties, such a constant succession of dances at the public hall. Even the king was galvanized into action, and, to the surprise of everyone, gave

ry establishment worked night and day. Of a morning you couldn't find a lady on a front veranda who wasn't stitching and sewing and basting a

similar cuts in all the standard commodities. There was no custom house in those days, and you were free to carry everything ashore unchallenged. A matter of eighty tons must have been landed all round the beach; and the pandemonium at the gangway, the crush and jostle in the trade room, and the steady hoisting out of fresh merchandise from the main hold, made a very passable South Sea imitation of a New York department store. At any rate, there was the same

t signaled the mail; Skiddy put forth in his consular boat, intercepting the cutter in the pass, and receiving (on his head) his own especial Government bag. The proximity of the Southern Belle, and the likelihood of Satte

inese cook. This amiable individual was singing over his pots and pans when he was suddenly startled by the apparition of S

he said abruptly, "I

s, some dim conception of State's evidence. Skiddy made the conception clearer, and promised him immunity if he would make a clean breast of it. This the Chinaman forthwith did in his laborious pidgin. A good part of it was incomprehensible, but he established certain main facts, and confirmed the stout, blue, important-lo

e United States, on the charge of having committed the crime of barratry,

im. Satterlee gave him a quick, blank, panicky look, and then, with a pitiful bravado, took a step forward with an attempted return to his usual confident air. He professed to be dumfounded at the accusation; he was the victim of a dreadful mistake; he tried, with a ghastly smile, to reassert

nful pull ashore, and tragic in the retrospect. A silence lay between them as heavy as lead. The crew, conscious of the captain's humiliation, though they knew not t

to rear the structure of a whole judicial system, including United States marshals, a clerk of court, four assessor judges, and a jail. His first steps were directed toward a little cottage on the Motootua Road, the residence of Mr. Scoville Purdy, a goaty, elderly, unwashed individual, who formed the more respectable

eet by forty, formed by four eight-foot walls of galvanized iron, and containing within five or six small huts of the kind that shipwrecked seamen might build on a desert island. In fact that was just about what they were, and as foul and repulsive as the real article. Owing to financial stringency the Samoan Government was unable to house or feed its prisoners

alf-castes, of a muddy, sweaty complexion, whose trustworthiness and intelligence were distinctly above the average. The Scanlon brothers, to any one in a difficult position, could be relied upon as pillars of strength. There was nothing a Scanlon brother wouldn't

shal, and the arrangement was made with them to take full charge of Captain Satterlee during his trial. He was to live in their cottage,

dy, "assumes that a prisoner is innocent until he is a

ou bought a Scanlon you got a lot for your money, including a profound gravity when you addressed him. It was t

, invariably acted as clerk of the court-any court-American, English, or the Samoan High. You associated his heavy, bloated, grog-blossomed face, and black-dyed whiskers, as an inevitable part of the course of justice. It was his custom to take longhand notes of all court proceedings, as, of course, stenographers were

quack doctor, whose principal nostrum was faith cure plus hot water. After arguing away your existence, which he always could do with extraordinary fluency, he would plunge you into a boiling bath till your imaginary skin turned a deep imaginary scarlet, and the

e United States navy, were considered unworthy of the judgment seat. Forged or suspected naturalization papers threw out another five. This reduced the residuum to sixteen, whose names were written on slips of paper, thrown i

own to lull Mr. Crawford's suspicions, and then had marooned the captain and mate on Ebon Island, and levanted with the ship! Heavens! what cackle, what excitement, what a furious flow of beer in every saloon along the beach! It was rumored that the great bargain-day sales might be canceled; that the goods might have

back door was kept shut, to keep out the meaner noises of domesticity, but at intervals in the course of the trial you could hear the deliberate grinding of the consular coffee; the

er, unbared to view on his hairy skin the tattooed form of a naked mermaid. A table stood in the center of the uncarpeted room, with a lawyer on either side-Purdy, the goaty-haired, messy, elderly man, half-blind, sharp-voiced, rasping out his case; opposite him, Thacher, a slinky, mean-looking young man, who was reputed to have left New Zealand under a cloud. He looked what he was, a cheap lawyer's clerk, of the pinched, hungry variety one sees in gloomy anterooms. At

ecting to be shot on sight, the bolder ones perhaps exchanging a whisper, the weaker brethren silent, and trembling if they caught an official eye. Outside, on the steps of the b

crew. Satterlee set up the lame defense that he had purchased the vessel from Crawford, and was therefore her actual owner. He was sworn, and gave evidence accordingly, but Purdy's cross-examination left him without a leg to stand on. He cut a pitiful figure as he floundered and lied and contradic

piracy; it destroyed the confidence of owners; barratry, if frequently repeated, would shake the whole commercial structure. A person who committed barratry would commit anything. In this manner he went on and on, reviewing the evidence of the case, destroying the whole fabric of the defense, dwelling at length on the enormity of the entire transaction. The James H. Peabody had been deliberately seized. The prisoner had lawlessly converted her, the property of another, to his own base uses. He had broken into the cargo and shameles

y human being again. The captain, leaning forward in his chair, gazed absently out to sea. The Scanlon brothers appeared, officiously wanting to know what they were to do next.

hat the western end of the island was still in rebellion. Jails cost money, and they had no money. Skiddy declared it was an outrage, and asked them if they approved of putting a white man into a bare stockade, with none of the commonest conveniences or decencies of life? They were both shocked at the suggestion. The pride of race is very strong in barbarous countries. A white man is still a white man even if he has committed all the crimes in the calendar. The Chief Justice very seriously pointe

kiddy. "I want to kno

aint), that Mr. Skiddy should have embarrassed the government at a time when its whole position was so prec

ked it even less than before. Faugh! it was disgusting! It would kill a white man in a week. It would be nothing less

n to forty dollars a month for custodianship and fifteen dollars for the room and the transport of Satterlee's food from the International Hotel-fifty-five dollars in all. Thirty dollars a month for the hotel raised the grand total to eighty-five dollars. Skiddy wondered ruefully whether Washington would ever indorse

entailed. He calculated that the telegram would catch an outgoing man-of-war that was shortly due. The consular salary was two hundred dollars a month, and if the eighty-five dollars for Satterlee was disallowed, the sum was indubitably bound to sink to one hundred and fifteen dolla

rse of wee

epartment authorizes charge for food, but none fo

ious reply, in which he was bidden to be more respectful. He was at liberty (the dispatch continued), if he thought it advisable as an act of private charity, to maintain the convict Satterlee in a comfortable cottage, but the Department insisted that it should be at his (Skidd

erlee?" returned the consul in official langua

e previous dispatch," r

aid Skiddy, again crossin

d become ill, you are at libert

isn't any hospit

he position it took up, nor the princi

and he looked up the Consular Instructions to see what pardoning powers he possessed. On this point the little book was dumb. Not so the Department, however, to whom a hint on the subj

hich he was the joy and pride. He received the best half-caste society on his front porch, and dispensed Scanlon hospitality with a lavish hand. These untutored souls had no proper conception of barratry. They couldn't see any crime in running away with a schooner. They pitied the captain as a bold spirit who had met with undeserved misfortunes. The Samoan has ever a sympathetic hand for the fallen mighty, and the hand is never empty of a gift. Bananas, pineapp

kable, and, in spite of himself, the little consul could not forbear suffering some of the pangs of remorse. The world was so big, so wide, with such a sufficiency of room for all (even romantic-minded humbugs and semi-pirates), and it was hard that Providence should have singled him out to clip this eagle's wings. There was something, too, very pathetic in Satterlee's contentment. He

rved to take away the appearance, besides (which they might otherwise have presented), of two friends spending a happy day together in the country. A Scanlon brother stood for the United States Government and the majesty of law, and propriety deman

to everything; but he could not resist certain recurring intervals of depression when he contrasted his present circumstances with his bygone glory. Fifty-five dollars a month made a big hole in a

ed his way into the bedroom, and handed the consul a letter. It was written on pale pink note-paper, of the kind S

he promptings of a heartfelt friendship. I loved the simple people among whom my lot was cast, and looked forward, at the termination of my sentence, to end the balance of my days peacefully among them. The world, seen from so great a distance, and from within so sweet a nest, frightened me, old stager that I am. God knows, I have never seen but its ugliest side, and return to it with profound depression. Kindly ex

Satte

burg bark that sailed last

uffused with tears. He made him sit down then and there, swore him on the consular Bible, and made him dictate a statement, which was signed in the presence of th

ld be just like the Department to get suddenly galvanized, and hysterically head Satterlee off at Hamburg. This would mean his ultimate return to Samoa, and a perpetual further ou

d champagne at dinner, a

to him, poo

YEARS

log, sir?" asked Mr. Fran

ned word for it," said

it couldn't have hurt me

y loved t

k his father'

rter, b

n who himself had fought hard for every step. "He had influence, mo

t," said Captain Hadow, w

llow I believe I ever

the basket,"

I must sit down at my desk and write: 'Past

crannies, a foothold for a vivid vegetation. The peak itself, a landmark at sea for ninety miles around, was half-hidden in the gloom of squalls and scud, and sometimes, for a moment, it would be altogether lost to view in the fierce murkiness of driving rain. Below the mountain, on the flat shore of the lagoon, an uninterrupted belt of palms concealed the little villages of the islanders. Here, in idyllic peace, a population of extraordinary attr

rom somewhere up there," said the capta

ncis. "It's my conviction he isn't

the reward?" as

utenant looke

fifty pounds," said

s. "We talked it over in the wardroom, and we thought we wo

ld have done the same for

r putting yourself in that pos

n I quit her Majesty's service it wi

r," agreed the

th anything has some time or other made a fool of himself about a woman. I don't

to fetch him," said Mr. Francis. "I could see

such sheep's-eyes at Jack. Gad! I don't wonder he preferred a bower in Eden with her to the steerage of a man-of-war and

e," returned Mr. Francis,

test thing I ever saw

o men

ship's in love; even the lower deck is off its feed; the boatswain says they're messin

anyone but him!" e

call him a deser

do it," sai

g, sir," returned the fi

s lie, I suppo

do myself for Jack Garrard

bes?" said Hadow. "We aren't certain sure he wasn'

inquire into it," said Mr. Francis.

" said Hadow. "Besides, he'll be sick of the whole

d why we didn't rescu

ve it!" crie

for stretching a point,

ped by the hill tribes of Borabora Island. On my threatening to land a party to recover him, I was dissuaded by King George, who cleared himself of any personal responsibility in the matter, and who promised, if only I wou

sir," said

orge a flaming char

sir," said

for the Queen, and the way he ga

, sir?" inquir

You can't tie down a surveying ship in wild waters the way you can a simple patrol. By

tion he will then go down on his knees

ome aboard whistling!"

volve a little-insince

e to lie like hell!

" observed

ee a fine lad ruined for a bit of squeamishness. Were he thirty he m

id Mr. Francis, "if we had each of us r

ten bad egg myself,

r. Francis, "I think you are taking a very nob

r actual cowardice, I positively know nothing worse. Were Jack my son, I'd rather see him stretched dead at my feet. I tell you, Mr. Francis, that when

nodded a s

captain. "We won't permit this u

, on our most loyal and heart

you will pass the word along that th

," said the fi

reward before we sail. You might even coach old George a bit about the

" said Mr

arther than you an

r," returned the

t at the turn of the t

sir," said

she had shifted her guns and lightered a hundred tons of stores among the gulls and mews of a half-sunken reef; she had had an affair with the unruly natives of the Walker Group, and had blown a village to fragments, and not a few of the Walkers themselves into a land as uncharted as their own; she had tried a beach-comber for murder, and had dangled him at the main yardarm, giving him later on a Church of England service, a hammock, and the use of a cannon ball at his feet; she had poked her nose into cannibal bays, where women of wild beauty and wilder

h the glass-smooth water, merged her steep sides and towering yards and canvas into the universal shadow. With whispering keel and a wind so fair and soft that one wondered to see the sails stiffen in the bolt ropes, the man-of-war stole steadily to leeward, with

ea, Hotham, and Stanbury-Jones, four officers of the ship, together with Hatch, a flinty-faced old seaman who could be trusted, all slipped down the ladder into the captain's gig and pulled with muffled oars for the break in the reef. Picking their way through the pass, with the surf on either hand roaring in their ears, they slowly penetrated the lagoo

gain into the shadow. From the neighboring houses there came the sound of mellow voices and of laughter. A pig rooted and rustled among a heap of cocoanu

g, Winterslea groped

," he

andcuffs clinked in Hatch's jumper. They inhaled the deep breath of tried and resolu

tive openness of the village began to give way to the ranker undergrowth of the plantations behind it. The path sank into a choking vege

said Wi

al wall of bamboos, set side by side, let through vertical streaks of light from the lamp or fire within. As the whole party drew nearer, they heard, deep below them on the other side, the plea

utiful girl was looking up into his face, one hand locked in his. In that land of pretty women she was the one that outshone them all-Tehea, the sister of the king, for whose sweet favor every man on board had sought in vain. And here she was, with her long hair loosened a

means of gaining him the friendship of men much older than himself. It had won Hadow; it had won Francis. There was not a blue-jacket on board the Dauntless but whose eyes had moistened unde

h a strange emotion. Tehea rose, and throwing her arms round his neck and forcing away his hands, pressed her lips to his wet eyes. Even as she did so Brady gave the signal for the whole party to move round to the entrance. He passed through first, the others close behind him. Jack l

s feet, white and

Brady in a s

and shook her like a dog, tearing away the whistle she put to her lips and dashing it on the floor. Jack put up his

, or I'l

at he turned his pistol on himself, and, placing t

ssed

the neck, while Hatch, resigning the girl to Stanbury

to hurt you. We're rescuing you from

s no deserter

up, old fellow,"

r fin, boy,"

ave him from the penalty of his crime, he underwent one of those reactions when despair gives way to the maddest gayety. He swore at Hatch, and made him take off the irons; he got out

d Brady, as Tehea insistently

the floor and touching it to his lips, "she says I've on

ll upon t

ath, flung the

f I live I shall try and repay each one of you. I shall try a

olemnly with every one of them.

off," sa

or," said Winterslea. Jack

've been to me already, and all that. But-but, gentlemen, she's my wife. I l

said

the dearest names, and begged her not to forget him. But she, with a perception greater than his own, swept away these despairing protestations with disdain. The daughter of one king, the sister of another, could she not meet force by force? These fierce intruders, with their rough voices and drawn pistols, who were they, to threaten a princess of the royal blood and carry awa

chosen,"

as she freed hers

own sight for having

en wish me well,

I hope you will di

cried after

to her, downc

hat may divide us, however wide the waters or the land, I shall be here waiting for thee, here

s God sees me, some

nderness, that Jack's comrades, already uncomfortable enough, were quite overbor

cried huskily, "you mu

le by little they gained the sleeping village, and pressed on to the beach beyond, where their boat was already afloat on the incoming tide. They took their places without a word and pulled out in the direction of the ship. In the pass, rising and falling in th

sail

the dizzy main-royal yard with one arm round the mast, Jac

he front as much by his fine personal qualities as by his invariable good judgment and high professional attainments. He had earned the character of a man who could be trusted in situations involving tact, temper, an

rlier life. It was known he supported two old-maid sisters, the Misses Hadow, the impoverished daughters of his first commander; but in view of his considerable private fortune this drain on his resources seemed scarcely the reason of his renunciation. Nor did it seem to his ad

his finger on Borabora. He shut his eyes, and saw the basaltic cliffs, the white and foaming reefs, the green, still forests of that unforgotten island. He was a boy once more, with flowers in his hair, wandering beneath the palms with Tehea. How often had he thought of her during all these years; the years that had left him gray and old; the years that had carried him unscathed through

he said, he dared not expose himself to a possible disillusion, to play into the hands of sardonic nature, ever mocking at man. No; but he would carry his ship close inshore and watch from the bridge the unfold

faces of his command, the white-haired captain, impassive, supreme, and solitary, gave no sign of those inner emotions that were devouring him. Along the shore the sight of the battleship brought out here and there a startled figure or a group; a couple of laughing girls, astride on ponies, raced the Inflexible for a mile, and then, their road ending in a precipice, threw kisses with their saucy hands; little children ran out into the lagoon, shouting with joy; old men, in Sunday parius and with black

ere and found his way through those tangled, scented paths with no other guide but memory. There was Papaloloa with its roaring falls; there, the ti'a a Peau where he had shot his first goat; yonder, the misty heights of Tiarapu, where Tehea and he had camped

ago," he said to himse

! it all seemed

ees, he felt himself in the throes of a strange and painful indecision. He paced up and down the bridge; he lit a cigar and threw it a

came the hoarse mu

sire to land, but something, he knew not what, withheld the order on his lips. Let him remain silent, and the opportunity would pass away forever; it was passing now with every turn of the propeller. Had he not told her

ordered Captain Stillwell to

lf to a run ashore," he s

. She was hoisted out and lowered, the crew dropping down the

ot to convey a fact patently obvious

ng foot in Lihua. He drew a deep breath as he looked about and noticed how unchanged it all was. There were some new houses in new places, and grass on the sites of others that were endeared to him in recollection; but it was Lihua,

g with a curious expectancy; at every sound he held his breath, and he would turn quickly and look back with a haunting sense that Tehea was near him; that perhaps she was gazing at him through the trees. He approached his old home through overgrown plantations. It awed him to part the branches and to feel himself drawing nearer at every step to the

ruck agains

oot struck again. He pressed the weeds back and looked down. He saw a tomb o

d to him before that

gar speech, simply tuungamau, or tombs. These words, unspoken, unthought of for forty years, lost, overlaid, and forgotten in some recess of his brain, now returned to him with tormenting recollection. He laid both hands on the thick stem of a shrub and tore it out of the ground. He seized another and dr

trength of his arms; he labored with fury to complete the task he had set before him. Here he stood, within four walls of vegetation, the sky above him, the cracked and rotted tomb below, satisfied at last by the accomplishment of his duty. The gold on his sleeves was dirty and disordered; one of his shoulder-straps dangled loose from his sodden coat; his trousers were splashed with earth. But for the moment the

come flocking out before he could reach his boat, to torture him with recognition, with the questions they would ask, with their story of Tehea's death. Then he laughed at his own

rse. The telegraph rang, the engineers repeated back the signal, and the great ba

TNO

on doubtful," familiar contract

S

their acquaintance. They were invited everywhere together, and the affair had progressed from the first or furtive stage to the secondary or solemn Sunday drive about t

rs gone by to marry a Samoan maid and settle down. The little Samoan had died, leaving behind her nothing but a memory in Silver Tongue's heart, a tangled grave in the foreign cemetery, and a host of relations who lived in tumble-down quarters in the rear of the bakery. In one way and another these hungry mouths must have been a considerable drain on Silver Tongue's resources; and though they feebly responded to his bounty-one by driving a natty cart and delivering hot morning rolls, and another by pilf

ship of his own Kanakas; so that at night, when one had occasion to seek him out, he was usually to be found on the mats of his native house, smoking his pipe or playing sweepy with his bulky father-in-law, Papalangi Mativa. I doubt if he had anot

and the great Atuona Plantation-this obligation, I say, I met easily enough so long as Rosalie was a child and safe in the convent at Savalalo. But when she grew to womanhood and went to live with her relations in their shanty near the Firm, I began to experience some anxiety in regard to her. Her relations, to begin with, were not at all the kind of natives I liked. They had been too long the hange

eadway in what little gayeties took place in the town. Of course, I went about to keep an eye on her-that is, when they asked me to their parties, which wasn't always; and I remember once making very short work of one fellow, a labor captain from the Westward, who seemed bent on mischief till I took him out in the starlight and showed him the business end of my gun. To tell the

ling,-brilliant, arch, and tender-that made even an old stager of sixty remember he still wore a heart under his jumper. Yes, I had a pretty soft spot for Rosalie, though I had sense enough to know that God had never meant her

dred-dollar piano on the way from Bremen for their wedding present. A fair wind, port in sight, and (say you) everything drawing nicely alow and aloft. So it was till that wretched fight at Vaitele, when the Vaimaunga came pouring in at dusk, bearing wounded, chorusing their songs, and tossing in the air above them the heads of their dead enemies. It made

lean, dark, handsome face was overcast, his eyes uneasy, and had I not known him for a brave man I should have thought that

I said; though, to be exact, I called him L

ible! It's disgusting! They have

unt," I said; "twen

ook of extraordinary gravit

e?" I

ht from Papalangi

hat?" I

come from a noble Savai'i stock, and that the son of my mother's sister, a stripling named O, n

usiness, Silver Ton

ich in Kanaka is

said Silver Tongue

tening,"

matai," continued Papalangi Mativa with the

I said in al

's uncle, the faipule, in whose house this ver

xclaimed, "this is

d you describe two hearts broken, two lives plasted, the f

d. "It's disagreeable, I admit, but I can't see

and least of all with a family that had the head of my dead wife's relation cut off and carr

's all off with you an

dded grimly. "Al

e circumstances, was a very justifiable indignation, "because the son of the aun

ht," said S

he beach, stopping here and there to discuss the news of the battle with those of my friends I happened to meet, until at last I passed Savalalo and drew near To'oto'o's house at Songi. Rosalie was standi

'o again, or try to belittle him as they used to, just because he's poor and live

, or somethi

ongi is ringing with his name; and he was complimented for his valor by

hat?"

ad!" sh

ice and folly. Perhaps, now I remember it, that letter was a mistake. It was a trifle warm in spots, and I dare say I let a natural irritation get the better of me. Be that as it may, Oppenstedt was deaf to reason and protested with undiminished vehemence that he refused to ally him

much as usual. Poor Rosalie drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga Taboo for a month,

and plagued him, I dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any impression I succeeded in making upon h

as the risk of gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Municipality at such an hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal, demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean dimensions into the trap and start off with us for To'oto'o's house at Songi. Here, after the usual ceremonious exchanges, the womenfolk and children melted away and left us alo

. This ifonga, as they call it, is a sort of public humiliation to expiate a fault, and nobody's very keen about doing it unless they have to-for it involves rubbing dirt in your hair, and singing small, and suffering a sort of social eclipse for a week or two after

f Rosalie, and how this unfortunate business

r the white man to say? His bond is that of marriage; theirs, that of blood;

"Preferable far would be death itself than that the son of chiefs should

and I swear thee thy honor shall remain undimmed for all the seeming appearance of humiliation. Besides, is it not written in the Holy Book that

said To'oto'o, "but what your Hi

hadow of my power, and it is meet thou shouldst pay in service for the bounty thou hast so long enjoyed. First I spoke to thee as

at twenty, making it

rry her Silver Tongue

er out in the courts; but Seumanutafa's tone grew peremptory, and the old fellow finally gave way all round. Then 'ava was bro

There was a flavor of the burial of Sir John Moore about the whole business-especially the hush-and not a funeral note being heard; we marching with measured

ters behind the Southern Cross Bakery. I suppose Silver Tongue thought our man was hurt, or something, for he came running after us with a bottle of square-face and a packet of first aid to the wounded, elbowing his way excitedly through t

d along, and somebody who said he was Fale Upolu and spoke for the entire Group, and an aged faipule from the Union Islands who seemed to have some kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief

er that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to

so gold in death, stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgrac

't a murdere

of a murderer

n unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the Moroa, and he blew the main deck off the ship together with three hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too, when lions tore them to pieces and bu

or good between Rosalie and Silver Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the

wo missionary ladies who happened to be passing in tow of some square-toes from the Home Society. Sasa and I plumped into a buggy, and with Scanlon on horseback pounding behind us we made all sail for Seumanutafa's. Bidding him follow, we then raced off to Mulinu'u, where, sure enough,

esistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as I looked down the procession, I couldn't see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us; Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay brothers from the school; a lot of passengers from the mail boat, with handkerchiefs stuck into thei

kery formed us up in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who stood and gazed at us transfixed fr

to think a year you'd never gu

d if there was any law or order in this Godforsaken land"-he looked daggers at the Chief Justice a

murder hi

oked at us quite overcome. For

deed!" he

e sold your relation's head to To'oto'o for seven dollars and a music box." At this, smiling from ear to ear, Tautal

sped Silver Tong

thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he m

canlon. "That's right, Capta

o be angry with Tautala. All To'oto'o did was to buy a li

of his indignation toward Rosalie's uncle. You see, he had been hating To'oto'o ferociously for six months, and couldn't switch off at a moment's notice on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hat

s bygones, and maybe you'll let us see a litt

urse," he said, snapping

osalie,

have wild horses on me trample-than that I should indermarry with a family and bossibly betaint my innocent kinder with the plood of so shogging and unprincibled a liar. A man so lost to sh

ped off the head of your fathe

ast to a liar-to a golossal liar-to one who has made a pee

want marry the girl at all. All the time you say something different. Oh, you ba

n't marry Rosalie because her uncle's a murderer. Now he can't marry her bec

ofe her!" protes

you aren't marrying the

gaptain, dat is what I can

-nothing

lly baker!"

delirious person,"

speaking in rich Swedish accents, "when I send my servant for a ham, Mr. Oppe

g back the Alameda for a talk, and I know there's an

ould land and punch his head

head?"

ngue's," s

in. Now that I had remasted her and overhauled her copper and painted her inside and out, the subject had bobbed up again; and as I couldn't make any objection, and as the moon for the first time in seven years had happened to be full at the same moment when the

mpletely baffled. However, like the jossers in the poem, it wasn't for me to reason why, and so I obediently ran about the beach, did what I was bidden, and discreetly asked no questions. I confess, though, that on the day itself my curiosity began to rea

s, the outer reefs were silent, and the downpouring air from the mountains was fragrant with moso'oi, and so warm and scented against the cheek that I doubt not but what you could have smelled Upolu ninety miles to leeward. As we drew nearer, the sound of girls'

ulder and heard her say softly in my ear, "Malie," which in Samoan means good or well done. Then she slipped away, and I heard her with sweet imperiousness ordering about the crew and bidding them slip the moorings. We had hardly got steerage-way when I heard a commotion aft, a choking, angry voice, that sounded through the hubbu

," said Sasa, coming

ling me what it's a

ilver Tongue down the after hatchway, while me and the girls we pushed Rosalie down

frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I recollected there wasn't five feet of hea

down there, S

oa, and as for Silver Tongue-if he get roa

sa-" I p

irls," she said, "and don't both

ar girl-" I

're hungry, isn't there ham sandwich? And if they're thirsty, isn't there cla

ou deserve the greatest credit for arranging it all; but for the

a, "everybody stay

ng of the whole ship's interior-the smashing of crockery and lamps, a tramping and a kicking and a throwing down of everything that was loose or could be wrenched off, together with a hollow, reverberatory boom of German profan-- No, I won't be unjust, and one really couldn't hear we

l about him, for heeling over in the pleasant breeze, and what with singing and telling stories and flirting in the moonlight we were all too happy and too busy to take thought of the stifling lovers below our feet. Occasionally I had a haunting sense of

with a bull's-eye lantern penetrating the gloom with a dazzling circle of light. It fell on the figures of Rosalie and Silver Tongue seated on a settee and locked in each other's arms. Rosalie was asleep, with her graceful head lying on Silver Tongue's breast and her long lashes still wet with tears. The baker, his face crimson with heat and streaked with rivulets of perspiration, looked u

it, old ma

love passage in grand opera, "me and Rosalie invites you al

SSOR

arts. He was a chief, of wild and strange appearance, with a black beard half covering his piglike face; a thin, bent, elderly chief, with hairy hands, and a head on which there was nothing at all, and teeth so loose in his mouth that at night he la

cupation, unlike that of all other white men, was to look at dead fish through bits of glass. He was a man of no kindness nor accomplishments, meanly solitary, and, in spite of two pairs of spectacles worn the one on the other, he was almost blind besides. Were you to come near him, he would scream out, "No, no!" Were you even to touch his bits of glass, or finger his sticky shadow pictures in the pool, he would run at you, crying,

ing a tin of biscuit among the girls with whom he had made friends. The rage of Professor No No was without limit, and he ran at Billy Hindoo and choked him with his hairy hands, and beat him over the body with a stick, and drove

een him struck. He would fain have brought suit against his master before the ancients, but they were afraid of men-of-war, and thought it ill to interfere. But the anger of Billy Hindoo surpassed that of a woman whose man has cast her off; and, baffled in one direction, he redoubled his efforts in another, telling tales about Professor No No that made the strongest shudder to hear

alesa was that she was white. Her father had been a papalangi, and her mother (who came from another island to the southward) a half-white; and Salesa, the child of the two, was fairer than either, and a girl, besides, of wonderful beauty. It was this that found her favor in Malamal

t, so that everyone was insulted and retired with darkened faces. Of course, she was not utterly without friends, women of contemptible spirit who fawned on her like dogs, saying, "Lo, is she not beautiful?" But they were only a handful, and by degrees grew less and less, for she was as mean with her property as Professor No No, and ma

while she spent the price of many tons of copra and pearl shell in filling a chest with purchases, saying, in her presumptuous way, "Give me twenty fathoms of this; give me forty fathoms of the other. This silk is good, lo! I will ta

e joked and laughed with the captains and supercargoes. Or, if some one put his head down the hatchway, she would call out, "Oh, the Kanaka dog! Go 'way, you peeping Kanaka dog!" Whereat the whites would slap her on the back, and it was said they even placed

d bemoan her contrariness and the fact that she was white. For though she was born and bred with us, she felt she was not of our race; and sometimes she would say to Malamalama when he reproached her,

in the way of information was accomplished. At last, greatly daring, Salesa arrayed herself in her finest clothes, and with servants carrying gifts of pigs and chickens, went down to the lagoon to pay a visit to the stranger. She found Professor No No sitting at his table, looking at dead fish through bits

y in the antics that served him in the place of a tongue. But once Salesa had set her heart on a thing she never faltered nor turned aside; and though she waited and waited, it was not as one conquered or resigned. When the quarrel came between Billy Hindoo and his master, she saw the means, in Professor No No's desolation and abandonment, of obtaining

disordered grass; she entered the professor's tent, filling his water-bottles, making his bed and decorating it with flowers and laumaile. Then, as she had so often watched Billy Hindoo from a distance, she spread the table wit

of a mother to her nursing child; and by degrees growing bolder with custom, she no longer watched until Professor No No had departed, but moved here and there about his land, secure by reason of his blindness and preoccupation. Like a wild animal to whom one approaches with gentleness and precaution, thus it was with Professor No No in the hands of Salesa. First he saw her only at a distance as she cleaned and swept; then a li

he bottle of beer and the sardines for his well-being, never heeding the sun nor the fiery sand. She sat with him daily in his boat, baiting his hooks and catching fish likewise, and grew wise also in looking at them through bits of glass, so that he no longer ran at her and cried, "No, no

k, and she bit him in return all over his beautiful body; and their fine house, once the envy of all Uvea, reechoed distressfully with screams and blows. But the madness of a woman for a man is not thus to be set aside, and the more Malamalama be

head, which glistens like a sting ray in the sun, and he is altogether hideo

is head which makes him

for shell, and cutting copra on my property, and attending to the affairs of the church where I am deac

oice of all the maids of Uvea in my stead. Professor No No loves me n

, morose and willful. He listened more greedily than ever to Billy Hindoo, and to the tales the nigger brought him constantly of Salesa's misdoing; for Billy Hindoo was crazed with anger against his master, and again

fe and Professor No No. He cried and cried, and staggered about and shouted, and rushed hither and thither, exclaiming, "I will kill them! I will kill them!" And all the while he drank of the gin with an increasing fury, so that he went at last a

aight as he could, in the direction of Professor No No, and shattered a glass barrel of dead fish at his elbow. Professor No No leaped in the air, so that at first we thought, erroneously, that he had been hurt; and he ran this way and that, dodging the bullets from Malamalama's gun. He seemed to believe that the taboo gave him protection, for, instead of bolting into the undergrowth, he raced aroun

o; and Professor No No was fined fifteen dollars for having won Salesa from her husband; and Billy Hindoo was fined fifteen dollars for having given the gin to Malamalama and for the mischief he had caused with his lying tongue; and Salesa was

alamalama, once a pillar of the church, was degraded from the rank of deacon and expelled, becoming speedily dissolute and abandoned, opening his house for forbidden dances, and taking new wives in shameless succession; and Salesa, her pretty body red with stripes, found no consolation whatever in her white darling, who ran at her repellingly, shout

alamalama that the sight of Salesa made him tremble forthwith with apprehension. And she, repelled by her husband and dependent on the bounty of those that despised her, became as one lost to all propriety, and would run at Professor No No and clasp him in her arms and cherish him, he fighting and resisting with all his might, crying "No, no!" in a terrible voice.

nt." Then it was that Salesa would throw stones back again, or would hide in the bushes and try to strike the nigger with a knife, saying in mockery as she sprang at him, "Hi, yi! take that!" And once she came to him so close that she slashed him across the breast, and he hastened bleeding before the ancients and vociferously c

see him so successful in his unbridled wickedness, took in their turn the pick of the village maids, propagating hatred and disorder the like of which had never before been known in Uvea. Then the drought came, and the young nuts shriveled on the trees, an

udgment at length arrived at. Malamalama was confirmed in his latest marriage, swearing with his hand on the Holy Book that in future he would cease his evil and cling to her, giving a fine mat by way of reparation to each of her predecessors; and Salesa was declared divorced from Malamalama, and she and Professor No No were ordered to marry the

ndal of everyone, until Tanielu, losing patience, struck him like that on the head and married him immediately to Salesa, whose face shone with contentment and happiness. In this manner Profe

qually repulsed, who said his master refused to pay him his wages to that day or to send him back at once to the white country according to the co

g Professor No No's arrival. There were some who wanted to have him killed as a punishment; and others who voted against Salesa, saying it was she who was at fault; and still others who burned with resentment against Billy Hindoo, declarin

arrels were emptied, many of them, of their dead fish, being washed and refilled with fresh water from the spring, and their glass tops fastened tightly with cocoanut sinnet. Then, when everything had been

n to live with her husband. But the white man was convulsed with fear, and said nothing in the making ready of the boat, not even "No, no" when Salesa put her arms round him and kissed him again and again on the lips; and Billy Hin

rifles, ready to shoot if the voyagers showed the least sign of coming back; and across the waves one could see Salesa supporting Professor No No as the boat lay over in the wind, and her mocking laughter was borne back to us. And we waited and waited and waited as it became a diminishing speck against the sky;

N ELIJ

nd cocoanuts, that Puna Punou produces, and you don't need no chart with red crosses from my dying hands to find any of them. But Mrs. Tweedie is still alive, and likewise Elijah Coe, and I'd be acting like the son of a sea cook if I did a hand's turn to hurt either. Of course it's an old story now, going

nd in six fathoms. A tidy little island, indeed, and I'd never raise it of a dawn, and all its palms and beaches and little basket-work houses peeping out of the deep shade, but I'd feel glad all over again that it was there, and breathe in the fragrant

extent, except in the annual reports that were sent back to be printed East; while Mrs. Geer she homeopathed the island and inculcurated the principles of female virtoo in the young. But af

d if you took away his cloak, he was the kind of fellar who wanted you to take his panjammers extra. Had no spirit at all, and the Kanakas walked over him scandalous. But it was his wife I wanted to tell about, Alethea Tweedie; for if ever

d have knifed each other for a single smile, if she had been the kind to lead them on-which, Lord bless me! was the last thought she had in her curly head. I suppose she came from one of them little places back East where

er laugh itself was like music, sounding long afterwards in your ears at sea. Hit? Jimini Christmas, I should say I was hit! Am still, for that matter, with just the memory of her, though twenty years have come and gone, and

rs old, tall and lean, with a nose on him like a hawk; and to see him stripped you'd think he was a boy, he was that straight and well set up. A fine man to look at, very quick on his pins, and kind of proud and silent in company like he was mostly thinking of something else. I re

Port McGuire by. But you know what a place the beach is for talk, and, anyway, heaps of good men and highly respected have been Blackbirders in their time, and I never could see no harm in the trade myself. But the gossip was that he had flown the Peruvian flag and emptied whole islands, though I never believed a word of it myself. It was remarkable, too, how he kep his people, and how they looked up to him, which wouldn't have been the case if he had been like they represented. There

ts unstinted. They walked home together to the Mission house, standing a long time at the door, and he talking with his hat off. He must have been well brought up and used to meeting ladies, for anybody could tell by her face that she was pleased. She didn't seem the least bit

e stayed nigh two hours, for I timed him myself from the deck of the Ransom-the beach being a great place to take notice, as I have said already-and what was our feelings when next Sunday the captain marched into church-yes, sir-in crisp new panjammers and a polka-dot neckerchief; and I'm blest if John Rau wasn't ther

Captain Coe going the way he did, and taking up with all that nigger-loving and "Johnny, how's your soul?" We could only see one reason, and that was Alethea Tweedie; and the betting was about even whether he'd pull it off or not. But if we d

t we might have saved our breath, as far as any scandal was concerned, for, instead of up stick and away, with the lady locked in his cabin, like some of the beach had fondly hoped, what did Coe do but turn missionary himself! Got religion, by God! till you couldn't have known him for the same master mariner; while John Rau and Lum

pt her at the top by worshiping so hard at the bottom. I guess she couldn't have got off without stepping all over him, and was just forced to be a saint whether she wanted to or no. Not but what she was as good as gold, and a pattern for any young white woman to go by, but her eyes always kind of melted when she looked at Coe; which was no wonder, as he stood six fee

ball, and "Jesus, Lover of my Soul" and "Where is my Wandering Boy To-night?" The biggest joke of all was in the trade room, where there was "Honesty is the Best Policy," and "God Sees You"; and the boys guyed Coe about it unmerciful till he laid out Tom Dawlish with a fanc

ust where to look for who done it. In Puna Punou you looked for Afiola, and the chances were you'd find him drunk on orange beer and laying for trouble with a gun. Oh, yes, indeed, there was two to his credit, to my certain knowledge, murders both, and I'll bet a ton of shell to an old hat besides tha

is communion ticket. I guess he had been out of the church for a matter of six years, and, as I said before, he was the scandal of the place and a terror. They were all dead scared of him, that was the truth, and, though his following was small, they were ugly cu

her with Talavao, his old mother, Sosofina, his aunt, Oloa, his uncle, his brother Filipo, and a raft of other blood relations whose names I disremember. Like all the chiefs of Puna Punou, Afiola was a tall, fine-looking man, very vigorous, lordly, and pleasant spoken, and if it weren't for hi

sugar cane or pineapples at the Mission-house door, and please, might their servant Afiola approach their Excellencies! It was as good as a play to see the rascal winding them around his little finger and doing injured innocent on their front stoop. To hear him gas, you'd think there was a conspiracy to run him out of Fale a Lupo; and even when he owned up to some of his misdeeds, it was like a compliment to the Tweedies for having yanke

ing the church. Of all mutton-headed proceedings, I never saw the like, specially as he hoodwinked them right along, and acted worse, even, than before. You can imagine Captain Coe's feelings when, rounding up a three months' cruise, he found this six-foot-three of black devil and hypocrite snugged in the Mission house like a maggot in a breadfruit. They say he went on awful, speaking out the truth before them all, and daring Afiola

ellar to Makatea, and disperse the rest of the gang about the Group gratis in the Peep o' Day. He said otherwise he was afraid to leave Puna Punou with such a scoundrel loose, and threatened to write to Sydney for a man-of-war. But Ma

enderson and Macfarlane were going to put on a steamer and run us all out. He tied up the Peep o' Day at a hundred and forty dollars a week and nothing coming in, making the excuse she was foul and the copper needing cleaning; and when you saw nothing doing and asked why, he flared up and said you could go to hell! And all this, if you please, for the privilege of seeing Afiola sailing up to the Mission house and being honored guest, and

ite drill, and went a-calling on the Mission house to see if he couldn't break into society again. But there was a wicked streak in Mrs. Tweedie, for all her pretty face and golden hair, and being too good a woman to love anybody but her husband, she found a queer kind of satisfaction in hating Coe, or pretending

n saying he might keep them and she wouldn't! If he had treated her just like a Kanaka girl who was dead stuck on him, I guess he would have found out that women are much the same, whether with golden hair or coal-black, and

d have gone on their knees and kowtowed to a sting ray if Coe had told them to, for they didn't have no more wills of their own than a child unborn, and everything he said, went

more the hang of what was going on around them. So they give Afiola a sort of drumhead court-martial, and bounced him unanimous, and all the pent-up deviltry of the man came out of him at one lick, like touching off a dynamite cartridge. Tweedie preached against him from the pulpit; the other chiefs, slow as they had been to move before, now waked up a bit, and there was a general feeling in the respectable part of the native community that he was pushing things too far. You see, he had named one of his pigs af

he thought or didn't think, what he did was to waylay Mrs. Tweedie one morning about ten, as she was going over to visit the native pastor's wife, who was sick; and, tying her hands and feet together with sinnet, he put her in a hammock and carried her off up the mountain; and this, if you please, in open daylight,

ike it choked him. When I tried to talk, he swore at me terrible, saying he wanted to think, by God! and I was to shut my bloody face; and ordering the mate and the Chinaman into the lazarette to get out the arms. There was a big store of them, which the pair got out on their hands and knees, the place being cramped and low and the guns furthest in; and they broke open boxes of cartridges on the cabin floor till they ran all over. Then Coe ordered the whaleboat cleared and went ashore with nigh a

o close, or fight if need be, with all the points of the game in their favor. But that wasn't what he meant to do, not he, but surrounded Afiola's two houses, and took out everybody in them-Talavao his aunt, Oloa his uncle, Filipo his brother (who was sick on a mat), and Afiola's two children, Mali and Popo, and a raft of men and women, to the

e settlement. I guess there was several hundreds of them altogether, taking it fine and large, retainers, hangers-on, and connections of one kind and another; but Coe's boldness took them by surprise, and not being in the secret of Mrs. Tweed

nd us like the wind in the rigging of a ship, and Coe and the Kanakas and the Chinaman and John Rau and the men pulling. But as for Coe's plan, we weren't long kept waiting for what it was. The prisoners were bundled into the ship's waist, with Lum to stand over them, while the mate got out the kedge and brought the schooner broadside on to the mountain. Then they bent a noose and ran up old Oloa between the masts. It was no fancy hanging with a drop calculated to his h

him informed of everything that happened-the Kanaka telegraph, we used to call it. Then, besides, up there they could see for miles, and Coe had kedged the schooner acrost the fairway so that Afiola might reckonize his relations in the rigging. You might wonder that such an unmitigated black villain would care what Coe did, so long as he had his wicked way with Mrs. Tweedie, and a whole trackless mountain to lose himself in; but there's an awful soft streak in K

ime he looked the people in the waist would set up a kind of a wail. At one o'clock we ran up Filipo, Afiola's brother, and settled down to another spell of waiting. Somewheres along of three bells we saw them getting a boat out by Pita's house, and lo and behold! it was Tweedie, with the native pastor and a divinity student named Henry to pull him. When they were close enough to talk, he

Tweedie was brought back safe and sound, and when he used up them he had aboard, how he was going to land for more. He didn't speak it particular loud, and you might have thought he was talking what a hot day it was; but there was that in his voice I've never heard before

out of the can and tipping it cornerwise to drink the ile. Bar Coe, he was the coolest customer of the lot, which was the more remarkable, as he was a mild-mannered man ordinarily, given to playing the China fiddle to himself, and very obliging if you wanted fresh yeast or the way he curried pigeon. Rau, the Belgian, with his hairy arms and stubby figure, struck one somehow as being more in his element in so wild a business, and you took his calm for granted, like a soldier serving a gun and doing what he's told. If Coe had ordered him to set

w any minute; and it was a shuddering thing to think of sending up another, and him a child. We all watched Coe out of the corner of o

om his chair, while Lum looked up expectant, and my giz

the water spurted at the bow like it was a race. When he got within a cable's length he stopped, and waved something he had in his hand, and shouted a lot of stuff we couldn't make head or tail of. Coe made motions to him to come nearer, and Rau and me did the same,

nd gunpowder, was a message from Mrs. Tweedie herself-not many words on it, and them printed, for she only had a pointed stick by way of

ard ladder, and I'm blest if he didn't put his arm round the Chink, and burst out sobbing-yes, sir, like a great overwrought girl, sitting on the tool chest, limp as a rag, and wiping his eyes with the cuff of his blue-striped p

e might have saved himself the trouble, for they hadn't been gone ten minutes before she came off herself, queening it in the stern of the king's great alia, seventy feet long, with Tweedie and Maunga, and the princes, and eighty men chorusing to the paddles, with drums aft, and a young boy dancing in the bow and keeping tim

him, saying he was her preserver, and how he had saved her from worse than death, and so overflowing and grateful and outspoken that n

e caught him-the tarnation liar! The crew came off, swimming in ones and twos to beg for pardon, and the prisoners were unbound and given three crates of biscuit and three barrels of por

bb with a cargo of Afiola rapscallions he was to drop, one here, one the

e other side of the island. Tweedie, too, who had always been a complaining whelp, started up a cough about this time, and died. Of course, this wasn't r

to him, calling him "the man of blood," and ordering him off the ship, as he stood his ground and wouldn't budge even when the anchor was apeak and the barkentine under steerage way. But he kept singing out for her while they tried to h

adder it was with Mrs. Tweedie with him, and they pulled ashore and were married by the Kanaka pastor, and went a-honeymooning in the Peep o' Day

.

of sea, known to the pajama-clad, ear-ringed traders as "the Group," and to the outer world as Micronesia-here, one burning morning there arrived a

nty miles wide, that divided the island of Apiang from its neighbor, Tarawa. His brother in the Lord across the strait, the perpetually unfortunate Titcombe (the

alling me at the same time a sting ray, a detached jellyfish-a white squid, together with some other local expressions of a highly wounding and contemptuous nature. The tiny fold is terrorized, and Thomas Najibika, my deacon and right-hand man, is in hourly apprehension of a massacre. My wife and little Kenneth are down

dear," said Kirke

ve to go," she

d tact made her the adored of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellowship that carried everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even the redoubtable Tembin

t him off with less than twenty tons of copra for my girls' school; and he'l

conceded her the place he was so much less able himself to fill. He had not the faintest apprehensions about the Tarawa matter. Ada would bring the king to heel in fifteen minutes, and in twenty there would be the dawn of

twenty miles of water under the noonday sun, and the problem of Daisy-Daisy, their little girl of e

e. "Last time she nearly died in the boat, and you know s

the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twel

of his hand. "And that with the island full of mutineers,

ke thoug

g-four hours; three back, makes seven. That means being home by sundown. We can trust Nanto

nough to defy every law of the island. It was terrible to him to leave his little girl in such company. Yet he recalled his last trip across the strait, when she had fainted with the heat-fainted again and again-as they had attempted, with such distress and agony, to screen her from a glare as pitiless as a furnace. He remembered dipping her, naked, all but lifeless, into the

ir talk and plans, she was precociously old for her age, and more serious and thoughtful than a little tot ought to be. Though her lower lip tremb

worried about them; and you'll let Nantok put you to bed at eight; and if you wake up and feel fr

piously, though inwardly ple

er to her breast. "It breaks mamma's heart

suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife and talked hurriedly about the magic lante

breaker of brackish water, a forty-pound tin of biscuit, two hundred fresh nuts, medicine chest, compass, and five pounds of niggerhead tobacco by way of petty cash, the whole expedition was tantalized and held back by the non-arrival of the guard, who were frenziedly searching for their boots.

were given and accepted; a keg of beef, to be subsequently presented, was hedged about with innumerable restrictions. That keg-like liberty-was to be at the price of ete

oking endless pandanus cigarettes. She helped Nantok prepare lunch-a bowl of chocolate made with condensed milk, and hot buttered toast. After lunch she had a nap with Nantok on the mats, and after that again an exciting talk about the great

hat a

. The hot tears scalded her cheeks. She had always liked Mr. Pettibone. Papa called him a proff-proff-proff something, but he had always been so jolly, and his red face and funny little blue eyes rose before her out of the mist. She cried over the lost Pettibone; over Tansy the cat, that had died from eating a lizard; over

-two strong, with plenty of money still to spend. Their revolt against authority had not been without some redeeming features, and an unbiased critic would have found it hard to blame them. After twenty-seven days and nights at the pumps of a four-masted sieve, the Lords had struck in a body, and forced the captain to abandon the ship and set out in three boats for Apiang. Here they double-dyed their crime by

, and no mistake, with bottled beer flowing like water, and songs and choruses and clog dances and hornpipes; and Papa Benson (in earrings and pink pajamas) a-blowing enough wind through his concertina to have sailed a ship. And there were girls, too, seven or eight of them, in bright trade-cotton Mother Hubbards-a bevy of b

ard a faint, faint knock. The concertina stopped. Fritz, the Dutchman, said "Hoosh!" and raised his pipe for silence. The knock was repea

oots and all, lined up in the roadway. Hardly a soul in the room knew there was a little white girl on the island; and the sight o

evver'body?

n embarrass

That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"-indicating a gia

Fletcher's fierce and warning look that cowed any incipient rowdyism. The brawny mutineer set her on his knee, and,

and then, addressing everybody in gene

too bad!" put in B

t on Daisy, "to do something nice to

Sea missionary and the rough white element that mocks his labors at every turn. It was the custom of the Lord Dundonalds, moreover, to

ve such a fuss made over them, while all you white gentlemen are left out

ttered Tom Extrum bitterly, "and not even a s

rm around Mr. Bob's neck, as though confident of having at least one friend among the company. "I wonder if yo

t. Even Mr. Bob shook with speechless mirth, till the veins on his forehead stood out like strings. Never in all its history was there such a hullabaloo in the Land W

to the rescue before the

th unexpected enthusiasm. "Now, then, boys,

but so contagious is example and so sheeplike the sailor nature, tha

t, and kinder and more resolute, with a heart beneath his rough exterior as simple and childlike as her own, she managed to keep up her courage in spite of the loud, frightening laughter and the tipsy boist

ously. "Please, Mr. Mathison, tell them the

. "Don't yer 'ear the little la

and traders fell in two by two. The rear was brought up by the guard, loutish, hobbling, and out of step, bearing their rusty Springfields at

were disturbing questions of sheets and darkened windows, and how to make it work. It was with dismay, verging on despair, that she saw the serried ranks of her recruits crowding the room to bursting, and all regarding her with humorous anticipation. But good Mr. Bob, holding her in his lap, and strok

en hall, we are here, two and three gathered togethe

lly Dutton, the donkey-man, who ha

gestion in an accommodating spirit. "And it is with great pleasure I p

her head, nestled closer to Mr. Bob, and felt a

from nominating myself as your hesteemed vice president. I do not wish to seem a-soaring too 'igh, or reaching out for honors that be

y Dutton sprang up, and wanted to kn

ances for 'igh-priced wines and luxuries. The assessments of this band is going to be low, and the diet plain. Who says Brother Dutton ain't the man for the place? Is it you, Mr.

e recording seckitary, who thereupon (after first inscribing the names of the off

foul, coming on this thirty year. We 'ave set in our time, me and 'Ope, on the bottom of a capsized schooner, ore laden out of Mazatlan, with our tongues 'anging out like the tails of some vallyble new kind of a black dorg. 'Ope and I took the Chainy coast once on a chicken coop. 'Ope and I, when we 'ad the dol

rty-six, little Daisy was trying to nerve herself to address the assembled company. The unforeseen docility of the band had put new ideas in that sleek, baby-seal head. Odds and ends of tracts and storybooks rec

president, "'ere's your Band of 'Ope,

been for an encouraging squeeze from Mr. Bob, who knows but what she might have burst into tears, and disgraced he

unconscious mimicry some of the rounded tones

; "that's a swell start! Tha

(This from a

for Christmas, because I'm such a good little girl. Saint Paul was a kind of a sailor, too, and got shipwrecked, like Mr. Bob, in an awful storm. I used to know all abo

m the pirate ship, to which he was adding some finishing touches, said he was

it is as well, too, for Bands of Hope isn't only for amoosement, but to do good, and help

ammy Nesbit, "where's this w

face! Dry up, there, Sammy

or papa wouldn't be as good an idea as any. It's an awful long way to Tarawa and back, and papa's nev

y?" asked the vice president wi

d Merry Christmas, like grandpapa's in Devonshire, when I was a little tiny winy girl. And papa will b

titter behind an upraised hand. When the Band of Hope laughed, it rolled on the floor, beat its clenched fists against neighboring backs, screamed, huzzaed, cat-called, kicked pajama legs in the air, and s

't with us is agin us, as Saint Paul says. Back-sliders and goats may return to the bar, but me and the fleecy sheep is agoing to see this

esself, and make a running with our lovely president. But we are on to you, Bob Fletcher, and I voice the sentimomgs of the whole ban

ed the band with b

bear a 'and to 'elp 'im, 'Enery. Set hup the little chair, Williams! Easy with Saint Paul, you, Tommy, or

arrying her to the table, installed

st haccording to your hidears, you sing out to the lower deck, l

like schoolboys, was dispatched to Holderson's station to get sinnet. There was a noisy wrangle over spelling. "I never seed it like that," said one, squinting over Billy's slate, "and I don't believe nobody else ever did neither." "For the love of Mike," roared another, "let's stick to them words we're al

of "In Her Hair She Wore a White Camellia," "Oh, Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out To-night?" and the "Mulligatawny Guards," the good work progressed with sailorlike speed and system. The bare, dreary room grew gay with gree

at the brisk "Aye, aye, Miss!" that greeted her smallest criticism. Mr. Bob worked like a horse, and not only made things jump, but kept a sharp watch as well on the unguarded utterances of his mates. Once, at some remark of Mr. Tod's, he flared up like a lion,

g a fascinating clog to Papa Benson's "Soldier's Joy" on the concertina, when Nantok rushed in, shouting that Mr. Kirke was coming. And, indeed, she had

t was forgotten in the pellmell rush, and from the height of her table she perceived her friends flying away without a word of farewell. No, not all. The faithful Mr. Bob, qu

ve no more trouble with the boys down the shore. And if any of them gets fresh, or gives 'im any lip, or 'oots-you tell 'im this, Daisy-I'll break every bone of 'is body, so 'elp m

m; and as her face pressed his, rough as mahogany

, and walked out of the door in his funny, heavy, lurching sea walk, looking straight before h

hen, happening to put her hand to her hair,

ke when I was kissing him!" she exc

ertheless, as she ran out

D

m a barkentine, lumber laden, from Portland, and from there back there was a haze on his past thicker than Bobby Carter's. Leastways, with Bobby there was his forty-five different stories to account for the leg-iron scars on his ankles, but with Old Dibs you hadn't even that to chew on. No

coanut milk always gave him cramps. He said his name was Smith. People who change their names seem always to change it to Smith, till you wonder sometimes they don't choose Jones

entleman like him, but all we had he was welcome to-and if not too long-for nothing. He seemed pleased at this, and more pleased still when he looked over our big bedroom and noticed my

uldn't take no denial, and flung it down on the trade-room counter again, saying he counted it settl

ong stay, s

him my name was Bill.) "I hardly know, Bill,

as eighteen men of the British bark Wolverine, in boats,

quiet place to end

s you've foun

Captain Corker's schooner beating out. I could see he was pretty downhearted, and though I set the music box going to cheer him and asked if he fanc

in business. We never let down the price of shell or copra on each other, and lined up shoulder to shoulder if a third party tried to break in, and so we had enough for both of us and a tidy b

uff he had, so that Old Dibs would be comfortable and want to stay. Tom was a good deal like that professor who could make a prehistoric animal out of one prehistoric bone, and then, when later on they discovered the whole beast entire, it was head and t

rs so we might be free of the Paumotu and Tubuai groups. When we said good night, whispering so as not to disturb Old Dibs, who was snoring out serene, it had grown to be a fleet

m; and it was noticeable, too, that he never cared to wander far away from the house. He was given to playing the flute in the stern of an old whaleboat, which was drawn up near the station with a cocoanut shelter over it. He never went anywhere, except to the native pastor's (Iosefo his name was). I suppose he felt a kind of protection in him-Iosef

osefo is a very agreeable man, and if it would be the sa

k me that; any friend of yours is welcome, I am sure, and

en dollars a week, for what do you think? To sit on one of his trunks (the trunk, I reckon) from seven in the morning till six at night, barring service time Sundays. Yes, sir; nothing else than a squatting sentry, mounting gu

and me like the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the respectability it give us before the natives; and

ugh and through, and if his money (he called it his "papers," his valuable "papers") weighed heavy on his mind, I guess I'd have been no better in his shoes, having to trust to strangers who might cut your throat. He had the whole island to roam over now, inst

nice in his Prince Albert, give his topper a wipe, and start away with the flute and a roll of music in a natty little case, like he was off to the Bank for the day. The only thing that ruffled him any was the children, about eighty of them, who always went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't

nesomest spot where a man could find himself. The natives left it alone at all times, except to bury somebody, and none of them came nearer to it than they could help. The Kanakas have a powerful dread of spirits, and e

he had it as much to himself as though he owned it; and he could lay his stovepipe down now without any fear of its being greased up or sat on. It led to his asking a raft of questions about the natives and their superstitions, and how none of them ventured to go near the place unless in a big party. He came back to that again and again, and always with the same interest.

out church affairs, and the Committee on Ways and Means meeting there regular. Even the gold twenty every week settled down in the same channel of routine, and I didn't bite it any more, as I used to do, nor hold it in

happened. I was sleeping very light, and I woke up all of a sudden and saw Old Dibs standing in the doorway! He had a

ong while wondering what to do, and what there could be in the boatshed to bring him out at such an unlikely hour. At first I was for getting my rifle and sitting up the balance of the night; but then, as I

get into the house, for Old Dibs had nailed the keys and handed them out every morning through the winder when I went to take him his shaving water. But the curtains of the bedroom weren't extra close, and if I could get up on t

traveling with an outfit of pinkish paper cut into shavings. You've seen them, haven't you?-the kind of packing they put into music boxes, fine toys, and the like, flummoxy twisted paper ravelings that protect the varnish and have no weight to speak of. Well, that was what

was stacking it in a leather dress-sui

It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd stop and listen. I ought

hen that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack be

ng one open after the other, till the suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands

he handle at one end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is, seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he had there, considering the trunks

med a snap to some people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life-except in the way of trade, and then it was to nat

g in the bottom, and started to load it up again from the stacks on the quilt. I don't know how long he took to do it, but it was quite a time, and he looked pretty well tired out when it was over, and he sat back in the rocker and rocked-me still glued at the winder-and he reac

of the lagoon, to think it all over. You might wonder what I had to do with it unless it was to make away with him and scoop the pool for me and Tom; but, as I said before, I wasn't that kind of a man, a

e longest scent of any, especially when they have the law on their side and courts of justice behind them. I wanted to keep the mon

had poisoned Old Dibs (wavering between Rough on Rats and powdered glass), covered up all traces of the crime, divided the money equal, and sailed away West in his five-ton cutter, to bring up at last in one of the Line islands. After arranging it all

an that skips out with a quarter of a million, are in two different classes; and it wou

s in the pass. He had finished breakfast and had gone, and so I followed him over to the weather side, where, as usual, he was sitting under his tarpaulin in the grav

on a near

ry meaningly, "you paid me a little

iter than paper, and the voice co

ut me and Tom Riley's been talking it over

, and trembling. "It's mine, every

I be guessing wrong if there we

my face looked friendly, and realizing that me and Tom would

ver had two better friends t

down h

truck on Old Dibs, and, being a Tongan, was full of the Old Nick, and would have bit my ear off if I had lifted my hand to him. The two of them had patched up an adoption arrangement, him being her father, and she

" he says. "Well,

I said. "What chance would

?" he i

rd, before you'd know what

long time and th

l never put me in the dock so long as I hav

om could improve

kground," he said. "I was looking for a place where th

n an island made to order, with electric buttons and trapdoors let into the

ic by this time, and I gues

Fetch along Tom, and I'll do anything you two say, for I've nearly split

ke a box factory. If I was in a tight place like your

strike this island, I'm a dead man!" And with that he took up his flute agai

ht off; and it was pleasant to watch Old Dibs setting back on a grave, with the comfortable air of a man that's being taken charge of by experts. I won't go into all that we arranged and didn't do, it being enough to say what we did, Tom beginning a bit wild about putting contact mines in the channel

ative pastor, into it part way, making him preach from the pulpit and order the people to deny all knowledge of Old Dibs if they were asked questions about him by strangers. Tom said the important thing was to gain the first day's start; for though it wasn't in reason to expect the whole island, man, woman, and child, to keep the

face; but he shied a bit when we walked along to the tree in question, and lo

he says, "do you take m

see no trouble about it, and the only thing to consider serious was how much the platform might show through the trees, and whether or not the upper boughs were strong enough to hold. We went up to make sure, straddling out on them, and bobbing up and d

isfying it was, too. A big, leafy tree seems a mighty solid affair, till you stand off and look right through it; and Old Dibs was for giving up the idea and trying the cellar, which was Tom's other notion. But the tree business appealed to Tom more, and he e

nd boy and in a bully humor, "and so close to the stars, Mr.

smile, like he was unbe

e responsible for the thing being a success, and don't l

not overpolite, though he meant no harm, "or a

need shut your eyes and trust to

e thing by me, won't you? You won't sell an old man for blood money? You won

s the broad of his back. Old Dibs ran after him and caught his arm, panting out he was sorry and all that, and how Tom was to put himself in his place, with the whole world banded against him. I fel

watching, it was beaming and happy, specially when they shook hands on it, and we

nd Iosefo commenced the first Sunday. Anybody that gave away Old Dibs was to have his house burned in this world and his soul in the next; and Iosefo laid it on thick about our all loving him, and what a friend he has proved himself to the island; and when he reached the point where he announced that Old Dibs had contributed fifty dollars toward the fund for the new church, you could feel a rustle go through

s took the specs off his nose and wiped them, while everybody was worked up tremendous to know whether he had been eat or not. Iosefo was no slouch when he once got his ha

's shed, and got in Old Dibs to see if it would fit him, which it did beautiful, being six foot six by two and a half. Tom explained we'd put a natty railing around it, likewise painted green, and car

id Old Dibs, jouncing up and down

ng to take that up

me?" said Old Dibs. "Why, you said a

, but all he asked was h

," said Old Dibs, very sly, a

p a tree like a canary bird; and so Tom or I didn't say what was in our minds, which was to bury it somewheres. In fact, there was a lo

against the forks, and maybe a little room extra for Mr. Smith's toothbrush and toilet tackle?" I m

ng at Old Dibs like he was measuring him for a coffin, "an

Old Dibs, laying down to show how easy it m

o Tom, noticing how the old gentleman bulked outboard.

of a moon, and you can almost see to read by it, and it wasn't the want of light that bothered us any. The trouble was more to get it level and lash it proper with zinc wire. But we finished it up in style, with a second coat of green paint everywhere except the bottom, and, though I do say it myself, it was as snug a little crow's nest, and as comfortable and s

ng for it, for after having put so much work into the thing he naturally wanted to see it used, and it galled him to wait and wait, with nothing doing. But Old Dibs t

n-the missionary bark, the Equator, Captain Reid; the Lorelei, Captain Saxe; the Ransom, Captain Mins; the Belle Brandon, Captain Cole; the brigantine Trenton, in ballast, calling in to set her rigging; the cutter Ulysses, with supplies for Washington Island, and the Seventh-Day Adventist schooner Pitcairn, with her mate dying of some kind of si

on the island had done for Old Dibs; and he branched out a bit in the line of household favorite, cutting kindling wood for Sarah, gutting fish, scraping cocoanut for the chickens; and the pair of them would sit and gossip for hours about the neighbors-how Taalolo had driven his wife out of doors, and the true inwardness of the king's quarrel with Ve'a, and why the Toto family was in ambush to cut of

ing a running mooring off the settlement. Tom and I was waiting for her in a canoe, Old Dibs meanwhile climbing into the attic and dropping the trapdoor, with "Under Two Flags" and a lamp to support the tedium. That was getting to be routine now, and his

arter to two gentlemen aboard who had an option on one of Arundel's guano islands. They

eir bookkeeper. All three of them were hulking big men, very breezy and well spoken, with more the manner of recruiting sergeants soft-sawdering you to enlist than the ways of people high up in business. Mr. Phelps, who took the lead, did several things to make me chew on, and he shivered over his "h's" like he had been brought up originally wit

ts?" he asked, filling up our

ut us two,

mewhere down this way,"

I, nudging Tom again

he met misfortunes in the produce commissi

ad!" s

e being greatly attached to her father, and him disappearing like that;

South Seas to lose a produce c

out of his pocket, while four pairs of eyes settled on Tom and

says I, starting in spite of myself w

hat face somewhere; I know I have. Lord bless me, wherever could it have been?" And he looked at it, p

on the table with a blow t

out, very excited. "A stout old party,

Phelps, half-start

said Tom coolly, "Captain Cole being

m shooting glanc

ember him," says the one they called Nettlesh

the Brandon," says I. "What w

id up with boils," says T

was,"

ass any talk with him?"

articular,

us," says Mr. Phelps. "S

g for a quiet place to end

wasn't to his taste," says Mr.

hed, "only Captain Cole broke

hing over the table, except the one they ca

by any particular name

old gentleman saying it must be a pleasant place with such a na

the table, and the captain foun

oke off sudden with "ouch" instead, being kicked hard under th

ull of the moon," remarks Tom, "and you'd be

t when we went ashore, for I saw the change on Phelps's fac

I would like to find him, just for my poor wife's satisfaction, I c

mmons doing now, and was it true that John L. had retired from the ring? But he didn't seem to recover the ground he had lost, and I judged it a bad sign when we went up the compa

elf to tip off the news to Old Dibs. When I had given the knocks agreed on, three sets of fou

an, they're

?" he asks,

"They say they're buying guano islands, but there's al

and began to sh

suring. "Tom will be due here at midnigh

was. But I said they'd rummage the whole island upside down before they were done, and

it, he saying, "God bless you, Bill-God bless you!" A

and he'd better move about the village warning everybody of the fack. It was well I did so, for Phelps and Nettleship and the rest come ashore soon afterwards with their pockets full of trifles for the children and the girls, and they strolled about the settlement, stopping to rest and drink cocoanuts in the different houses. Phelps had brought the photograph along and showed it right and left, asking if they had ever seen anybody like that. I guess some of them would have cried

od. They had quite a jollification that night on the schooner, singing songs and playing some kind of a hurdy-gurdy on deck, and the sound of it come over the water very pleasant to hear. I sneaked off in a canoe toward ten o'clock, to make sure it wasn't a blind, but there was no misdoubting what they were up to. They were all

blanket, a demijohn of water, and a bottle of gin. She said he had eaten no dinner, groaning and carrying on awful, wanting her to shoot him with his pistol and end it all. But he seemed to have pulled himself together by the time we were ready, for he let himself d

s could be lifted comfortably. Old Dibs insisted on cutting one open and serving us out a double handful each, not forgetting a share for Tom's wife as well as mine, and say

in front. The boatswain's chair and the coil of Manila rope were lashed down on the load, as well as the basket of provisi

ng along as wheeler, and Sarah and me tugging like battery mules! Of course everybody knows that gold is heavy, but when you run into the hundred thousands it becomes pig-ir

done-up Eskimo dog in the pictures, and having to be fanned alive again. But when we'd propose to cut him out, he'd sa

of light line, having to feel his way for the place we had marked with the handkerchief, and threatening more than once to come down quicker than he had gone up. The handkerchief had rotted off, or blown away long since, and it bothered Tom not a little to find where it had been. But at last he did so, dropping his li

anged places, Tom being a heavier man to pull, and I remaining aloft to handle the freight as it came along. They made the boatswain's chair fast below, and sent her up with the first load-two bags of coin-getting it on a

ade him into it, and rolling over and over in desperation. We argufied over him for an hour, and it seemed all to no p

home. Then he said he'd come home, too, and we said No, we had washed our hands of him. Then he said he was only a poor old man and would blow his brains out, and we said he might, i

runk, and tried to fill up with air to make himself lighter. But he reached the top all right, and I landed him very careful, he squatting down on the floor and saying, "Oh, my God!" I was too busy clearing away, and letting the block down to Tom, for me to hear much else

eck for whites, and if he was married to a Tongan, and was spoken to like that, he'd quit-by gum, that's what he'd do! Then she said it would serve me right if she went away in the schooner with the white men, and I would never see her again. And I said, "Oh,

ounted out the money Old Dibs had given us previous, and said we were all a pack of fools, and that he was as fond of Sarah as anybody. So peace descended like a beautiful vision, and there was four hundred and forty

whole schooner party, Phelps, Nettleship, the bookkeeper, and the captain. They had thrown off the mask now, and Phelps had a warrant a y

re in the guano business,"

helps, very genial, "and we trust you will not oppose th

," says I, equally genial, "though may I make so bold

ys Nettleship, like it was Georg

tell it," said Mr. Phelps, ha

AND POUND

, Suburbs Limited, and other undertakings. Fled to the United States, where he had previously put by sums aggregating two hundred thousand pounds; resisted e

ith bushy, gray eyebrows; scanty gray hair; of a plethoric habit, and with a noticeable hesitancy of speech. When last seen was well

Cust, No. 318 George Street, Sydney, New South Wales, on receiving

arboring the fugitive, or aiding and abett

times and then

here to si

rching these premises," said Mr. Phelps, disregarding my

did have an obj

st the same," said M

e was dried blood on Mr. Nettleship's knuckles, and it didn't seem good enough. I s

in," s

sure to look on and see them doing it, but I had to take my medicine, and it was common sense to appear cheerful about it. They crawled into all kinds of places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of p

th a few white trading gentlemen, maybe, to keep him company; and I said, "Oh, dear, I hope that isn't any insinuation against present company!" and he said, "the present company might put the cap on if it fitted them"; and I said "if he couldn't k

hat they made no appearance of moving, raising an awning over the quarter-deck, and bringing up tables and swinging hammocks like it was for a week. The pastor had told Tom that

t simultaneous. That night they set a watch on my house and Tom's, the news coming in from Iosefo, who had spies out watching them. It

bucket, and the fartherest any of them got away was a hundred yards, and him with a bottle in his hand. They were a pretty ugly crowd by nightfall, refusing to go back to the ship when ordered, and roaring and yelling about the settlement to all hours. The afterguard still kept tab on me and Tom, however, and so yet another night passed without our d

nk so much gin with the schooner's people; for though we had held back all we could, and had tipped our glasses on the sly, we couldn't seem too behindhand in whooping it up with them. But we were dead dogs now all right, and the main part of breakfast

to sleep, which it seemed as though they never would. Yes, a long day, and a long, long evening,

ne for him; that, and the fear of being caught, and all the water having leaked out of the demijohn, which he had stood on its side the better to hide it. He wa

o the boatswain's chair, and couldn't as much as raise a little finger to help himself or hold on, and once we nearly spilled him out altogether. Fortunately, my old girl had brought some hot coffee in a beer bottle, and this was just like pou

a friend, he had no more call to keep him sitting on the chest. This made Tom and me feel good, for it showed he trusted us now, which he had never quite done bef

izing off the lid, and what did I mean by it? After having lived together so long and comfortable, it wasn't very pleasant to see him going crazy on us-and going crazy that way-being suspicious we meant to rob and kill him, and all of us being in a conspiracy. He told the pastor he was afraid of his life of Tom and me, and if it wasn't for Iosefo

ere was nobody to shoot, the room being stark empty, and the only thing of Old Dibs his clothes on a chair. We were at a loss what to do, and waited for half an hour, thinking he might turn up. Then, real uneasy in our minds, we went out to look for him. He wasn't anywhere near the house

im, but he had passed to a place beyond help or hurt. I went back for Tom in a protuberation, saying, "My God! Tom, what do you think's happened?-Old Dibs's dead in the graveyard!" I guess the ol

ll divide on t

that can stand over t

very sharp; and with that we b

e'd hear his footstep, everything laid out just as he had last touched them, and almost warm, even to his slippers and his collar and the old hat aga

two camphor-wood

them by the end and

ere,"

" says I, with

, and turning around,

d, Tom!"

ng," said Tom, as savage as a

other word, but rummaged t

ager than ever, "and what kind

of my busin

ve a quarter of a million by the tail and let it go? You might have been slac

taken it very

y and that, till the whole caboodle was sunk in a solid block? What do you suppose he was doing with the lantern, you tom

eyard," says I. "I'll go bail it's within

ke the place

ought of the money, being struck all of a

ed," said Tom; "and if you had a spark of proper feeling, Bill Hargus, you'd fa

omehow, it had never seemed my money till then, and the more I felt it mine the more galling it was to give it up. Tom relented when he saw how cut up I was, withdrawing all the hard things he had said, and going on the other tack to cheer me up. He said he was just as big an ass as I

d the place, with a priming and two coats of white paint, and a natty gate to go in by with brass hinges. The whole settlement turned out, Iosefo outdoing himself, and the king butting in with an address, and everything shipshape and Bristol fashion, as sailors sa

fs and elders, who give us warning it had to stop ker-plunk! They said they wouldn't allow their graveyard torn up, and altogether acted very ugly and insulting. Tom and I had to sing small and put in a holiday neither of us wanted, for the Kanakas had the whip hand of us, and I never saw them so roused. Tom at first tried to carry it off with a hi

sight. We thought we were managing beautifully, till the next day, when we went out fishing in Tom's boat and come bac

both ways. But it was a poor set off to a quarter of a million of cold coin where almost we could lay our hands on it, and if there was in the whole world a human being more blue and miserable than me, it was Tom Riley. Then, to make matters worse, the whole thing was common property now, the Kanakas knowing as much as we did, and more, and the news was passed along to every ship that came-all about

ff scot-free with only a taboo; then it was the Tasmanian, with a bullet through the captain's leg; then the cutter Sprite, with concussion of the brain. I never s

rallied with everything they could lay their hands on, from Winchesters to fish spears, and my, if they didn't chase out them Frenchmen at the double! They got away, leaving one dead and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the

and once, when Tom and me went out in a whaleboat toward a becalmed German bark, hoping to raise a newspaper or a sack of potatoes, they opened fire on us and lowered two boats to tow away the ship. Tom and me got mixed up in the general opinion of the place, which was stinking bad and wh

landed and burned the settlement, including everything me and Tom owned in the world, except the clothes w

ibs's treasure to keep us now, for the natives all got together and heaped up the graveyard solid with rock to the level of the outside walls, and floored the top with cement six inches deep, putting in a matter of a th

l. You see, I had promised her something nice in the marble line from Sydney, and kept putting her off and off in the hope she'd forget it. She had been remarkably fond of the old fellow, as, indeed, so was I, and she said it was a shame to go away forever with this unattended to. I didn't have no time for anything fancy, nor the ability neither, but as

CR

ME

YON

ND PHILA

EC

ROWING

ABOR

leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an impending gale. Ashore, the palms bent like grass in the succeeding gusts, and the ocean beaches reverberated with a furiou

e sort of vessel that does well under plain sail, and when pressed can fly. The other, the Edelweiss, was a miniature fore and after of about twenty tons, a toy of delicacy and grace, betraying at a glance that she had been designed a yach

was leaning over the rail gazing at the Edelweiss. He was a man of about thirty, his tanned, handsome face overca

rable months, he had never thought of her marrying; he felt so confident of that fierce love she had so often confessed for him; he had come back repentant, ashamed of the burning offense he had then taken, determined to let bygones be bygones, and to begin, if need be, a new and a more blameless way of life. It was natural for the girl to side with he

adge-his Madge-was aboard of her. He paced up and down the quarter-deck. He had more than a mind to get to sea, but the gloom to windward daunted him, and he ordered out the kedge instead and bade the mate

n the heart within is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce tamely in a decision that was doubtless already abho

ew near her, so that when he stood up he was surprised to find his head above the rail. So this was Horble, t

ble?" said G

you aboard,

and sat side by

adge?" sai

s ashore," sa

ng but Madge," said Gregory, detecting

of blurting out a disagreeable remark, and then hesitated, making an inarticula

said Gregory, glancing

no crew," mut

ry. "Do you do it with

runs her," r

pully-hauls your damn ro

What's twenty tons be

ks?" sai

ks," sai

apping your wife in lux

ing ashore, but her heart was set on the schooner. I can m

against anybody," said Gre

ng. His fat, broad back said, plainer t

his very minute," said Gr

tell you," said

elow and make su

looked about the empty cabin and peered in

he cried.

se, taken bodily from her old home in Nonootch. Scattered about here and there were other things that brought her memory painfully back to him; that hurt him with their familiarity; that caused him to lift them up and hold them wi

hen at the uncouth clothes as they gradually appeared, then at the fat, weak, frightened face of the man himself. He grew sick at the sight of him. Would Hor

n," said

said G

own glass. A second mate's grog! O

uck," sai

arty," sa

ows on the table, "there's something you oug

le g

ne!" said

re gin, and then slowly wiped hi

ting she's my

d pounds for her, cash a

e women," said Horbl

pounds!" rep

y wife to no ma

again. His speech had grown a little thick. He was angry and

s there this minute, not a dollar owing on her bottom, with two hundr

shook h

't for sal

Gregory. "You'll end by

she would have married you in spite of old Blanchard. But when you went away like that you left the field clear, and you mustn't bear me no malice for

said G

don't think it comes very well from you to do it; I don't think anything that calls himself a man would do it; least of all a gen

l her lost,"

with a quiver of his lip, "we'll take an

till I see Madg

egan to

e to decide,"

emanded Horble i

d me, old fello

at my table, about my wife!" exclaimed Horble

said

the matter over in his head. He said at last he w

r of dirt to wi

that something was about to happen, and he was in the sort of humor t

rking with furtive insincerity, "There's a power of dirt to windward!" This said, the door went shut behind him. Gregory sprang to his feet and burst it open with his powerful shoulders, crushing Horble against the bunk, who, pistol in hand, fired at him point blank. The bullet went wide, and there was a sound of shattering glass. Gregory's hands clenched themselves on Horble's, and the revolver twisted this way and that under the double grasp. Horble was panting like a steam engine; his lower jaw hung open, and he cried as he fought, the tears streaking his red face; there was an agonized light i

, and then went out, sick and faint, shutting the stateroom door behind him. He sat for a long time beside the table, absolutely spent, and still holding the revolver in his hand. He was shaking in a chill, though the temperature was over eighty, and the cabin, when he had

n; it was blowing great guns to seaward, and the lagoon itself was white and broken as far as the eye could reach. Aboard his own schooner they were

e risk of that appalled him. Besides, whatever happened, he had another reason for keeping the truth from Madge. The fact of Horble's death, even if she thought it accidental, would shock her to the core. It was inconceivable that she would feel anything but horror stricken, whether she judged her former lover innocent or not. She might even undergo a terrible remorse. At such a moment how little likely she

his lee. In his lawless and desperate past he had taken many a fall with fortune; he was accustomed to weigh the danger of perilous alternatives; he knew what it was to hazard everything on his own vigilance and skill, and to bear with a sailor's fatalism the throw of those dread dice on which his own life had been so often staked. But to stake Madge's life! Madge, whom he loved so dearly! Madge, for whom

ver counted on her coming off in company. Fool that he was, he had taken it for granted that she would be alone. Everything, in fact, turned on her being alone. Then, with a start, he remembered his own dinghy, and how it would betray him. He had made it fast on the schoon

might have been bumping against Gregory's heart, so agonizing was the suspense

u to bring me off,

hed musically in deni

ow and see the cap

a cold sweat

ubtfully. "I go home now, and

won't matter

regory

me quick," said Maka

way where they had left her. Gregory felt by instinct that she was gazing at the Northern Lig

so it came over him that he was extraordinarily tired-

d in almost a w

y, paling as she sa

" she

Then he leaped on the house and ran to her, she shr

have kissed her. "Greg, you must not!

she pushed him fiercely back. Her eyes we

s wife,"

ce, she seemed to

she cried. She would have p

!" he p

," she broke out. "You sha'n't

on her black, loosened hair, now tangling and flying in the wind. He was so weak that she soon got the better of

He showed her what she had done. She drew back,

u let me go?

erth. I made him drunk, Madge. I had to tal

was somehow plain that Horble had been at fault before. She never

o say?" she said at la

ou to for

ing advantage of J

ving you the

that, Greg-neve

fath

nd blame my

e only

You said it was forever. You cast me off, when I cried,

a fool,

consequences, and

f I ca

ly in the eyes. "I am

elf. I'm throwing myself on your mercy. I'm begg

she said; "why should I

and will sink forever behind us, and no one here will ever see us again or know whither we have gone. Let us follow the gale, and push into new seas, amon

d sky. "I think I know the

ed, "and go down to it

n the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff of a sail as any man's, she knew as well as Gregory the hell that awaited them outside. To accept so terrible an ordeal seemed like a purification of her dishonor. If she died, she would die unstained; if she lived, it would be after su

s wife!"

r; but in his mind's eye he saw that stiffening cor

out. "I'm his, Greg. I will no

r madness had passed. She listened unmoved, and when at la

rail instead, his

rd reef. Then she went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later, hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory, like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both sails. The wind thundered in them as they r

sea, Greg,

he cried.

d I," s

not do so. It wasn't in flesh and blood to tell her he had killed her husban

e I am brave-while I am yet able to resist-

own," h

?" she returned. "What

id, "I'll go myself. With my big schoon

nd kissed him. "You sweet traitor

ently that he woul

ld risk myself, but I could

The words almost str

id. "Have you no

times better than you ever did. Joe's man enou

let you go!"

stop me," s

strength was gone; he was as feeble as a child; in the course of those short hours

nxiously into his face. She had known him for two years as a man of unusual sternness and self-control; obstinate, reserved, willful, and moody, yet one that gave always the impression

ated. "I'll go down an

," he said faintly. "I suppose it's just a touc

an ax. While he was wondering what she meant to do, she raised it in the air and crashed it down on the groani

ner up in the wind, and cried ou

he wouldn't do an

e wheel and c

t, Greg,"

to your death,

our boat!"

d slowly be

me good-by, Gr

er the truth, but a strange, leaden powerlessness benumbed him. He got into the dinghy, drew in the dripping painter she cast after him, and watched her ease the sheet and set the vessel scudding for the passage. With her black ha

over him with a bottle of whisky. The Malita steward was chafing his naked

!" he gasped;

r ago, sir," said

OF E

and roll of the emptiest ocean in the world. In my time it was just big enough to support two traders, not counting old man Fosby, who had sort of retired and laid down

understand, and sometimes a diver went down and never came up, and you could see him shimmering down below like the back of a shark, as dead as a doornail. Nobody would dive after that, and a whole year might pass with

en talked of it, we never did-being like people half asleep in a feather bed, with life drifting on unnoticed,

an realize how much out of the beaten track it was and how little they had yet learned of civilization. They were too simple and easy-going for their own good and that's a fact, for they allowed David, the Tongan pastor, to walk all over

ve if we had had one, which we hadn't. Of course Stanley and I knew it could not last like this forever, and even the natives weren't unprepared for our being annexed some day by a passing man-of-war-though all hoped it would go on as it was, with nobody interfering with us nor pasting proclamations on trees. It is all very fi

no Kanaka could call his soul his own. Every night at nine he stood out in front of his house and rang a hand bell, and then woe betide any one who didn't go

e pastor's whip thrown in extra. It was a crime to miss church, and a crime to flirt or make love, and the biggest crime of all was not to come up handsome with church offerings when they

did not dare interfere with us white men, though Stanley and I toed the line more than we liked for the sake of business and keeping clear of his ill will. The only one who wasn't scared of the old Tartar, and stood right up to him, was a hulking big Fijian, named Peter Jones. Nobody kne

s way into a family and married their daughter, helping himself promiscuous, besides, to anything he fancied, with nobody daring to cross him nor complain. Stanley and I were a

them. If ever there was a scandal in Raka-hanga it was the sight of this six-foot-three of raving, roaring savage, rough-housing the place upside down and bellowing insults at the top of his lu

didn't dig his way out! Yes, sir, that's what Peter Jones did-dug through the gravel floor and tunneled out, rising from the grave, so to speak, to the general uproar and hullabaloo of the entire settlement. Then

at most ferocious with crowbar and ax until it was nothing but a heap of rubbish. Then he shot holes through the galvanized roofing, and burned it in a blazing fire along of the iron-studded door and window framing. By this time the missionary was trying to raise the multitude agains

fe that Stanley and I were off fishing on the windward side of the island and thereby missed Clemm's arrival in the lagoon, which was well over before we got there, wi

r and a commanding look. When we came running up he spoke to us very grand, though genial, saying: "Gentlemen, I am the new Resident Deputy Co

went on to tell us that he had just been landed by H.M.S. Ringarooma to take possess

he natives called the wickerwork. Mr. Clemm said the Ringarooma had been sent under hurry orders to annex right and left in order to forestall the French, who had broken their international agreement and were hoisting their flag all over the place. He also explained that was the reason why the man-of-war could not stop, it being a neck-and-neck race between her and the Frenc

s reverencing him as he passed and eying us two most respectful. The old men were there in rows, and also David, the pastor, who took the interpreting out of my hands

Commissioner made a rousing speech, all about the loving English and the low, contemptible French, and at the end

s again repeated, even the children holding up their little paws, and the flag hoisted temporary to a coco

ch was the finest in the settlement, and ordering him to clear out, bag and baggage-which Fono didn't want to do and objected very crossly till Peter Jones snatched up a rock and ran at him like he meant to p

mind my own business. But any rancor I might have felt at this disappeared when he made me clerk of the court, and Stanley ta

use that was next built for the Commissioner to live in. The natives had to do this for nothing, supplying forty men, turn and turn about, though the galvanized iron, hardware, paint, varnish and what not were bo

to double the copra crop of the island, not to speak of shell-so that the taxes were a blessing in disguise, the natives being better off than they had ever been before. Of course they didn't like it and put up a great deal of opposition till Mr. Clemm raised a Na

, they were soon the terror of the island. Not that Mr. Clemm didn't keep them tight in hand, but when it came to an order of court or any b

forbidden to contribute to the church, and the pastor's private laws were abolished, and there was no more excommunicating nor jail for church members nor any curfew either. The natives went wild with joy-all except a few old soreheads that are always

raft of questions about the Evangel of Hope, and that with a ruminating look, and about the character of the people in charge which were Captain Bins and the Reverend T. J. Simpkins. The Evangel of Hope never stayed any longer than to land a few stores and hymn books for the pastor and take off what copra and sh

known before and that was-work. The Commissioner couldn't abide laziness in a Kanaka, and went at them terrific, building a fine road around the island and another across it, with bridges and culverts, where

were proud, too, of what they had done, and I doubt if they had ever been so prosperous or freer of sickness. I know Stanley and I doubled our trade, in spite of having to take out heavy licenses, which meant that not only we, but everybody else were that much better off. Petty thieving disappeared entirely, and likewise all violence, and one of the Com

lemm did, tearing down five or six houses for the purpose on the lagoon side, nigh the wharf, and planting rows on rows of white headstones, with low mounds at each, representing graves. There must

t took all of Mr. Clemm's authority to keep them quiet, and it got out that the Commissioner was expecting the end of the world, and the graves were for those that wouldn't go to heaven! Kanakas are like that, you know-spreading the silliest rumors and making a lot out of nothing-though in this case they couldn't be blamed for being considerable scared. But Mr. Clemm knew how to turn every

that happened. The first was a tremendous yellow flag raised on the Commissioner's staff, and the second were those three pistol shots which were to announce the Day of Judgment. Then you ought to have seen the settlement scoot! There was a rush for the church like the animals at the Ark, thou

at the sight of Peter's yellow flag rowing towards her, and through the glass I noticed a big commotion aboard, with half a dozen racing up the rigging and making signs at those below. It was plainer than

easy enough to put two and two together, remembering the sea meaning of a yellow flag which is seldom else than smallpox. Yes, that was why we had all took and died in the new cemetery, and that was why the settlement looked so lifeless and deserted! After no end of a powwow they hoisted out a boat, and when

for another year! We celebrated it that night with medical comforts unstinted, while the natives they celebrated, too, thankful to find the world still here and the Day of Judgment postponed. Old David wrote a red-hot protest, countersigned by

fitted up regardless and proved to be remarkably fast and weatherly. She was the apple of the Commissioner's eye, with a crew of four in uniform, and a half-caste Chinaman named Henry for captain, whom he had persuaded to desert from a German schooner where he was mate. Mr. Clemm was so fond of taki

s took charge of the government, advised by Stanley and me. It showed the splendid influence Mr. Clemm had had that Peter had become quite a model, and instead of breaking loose was all on the side of law and order. Our idea was to hold the fort until a new Commi

teen months before, and Stanley and I were the first to board her, meeting th

Howard Fitzroy Clemm," said I. "He sailed from here on March sixteenth in t

as a sharp, curt m

talking about," he said, a

anley, "and the same day he took possession

d us,"

, like if we were making sport

sedition, bigamy, selling gin to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called himsel

ty like we all had thought, Clemm had turned pirate in a small way do

OF BUT

rnly women beating out siapo in the shade. It was a dunghill of out-islanders, Nieues, Uveans, Tongans, Tapatueans, banded together in a common poverty; lan

time of the Persecution, and had died in Samoa when he was a child. Old Siosi, who had adopted him, could tell him no more than that; not that O'olo asked many questions, being content to drift on the ocean of life, and careless of any

haughty contempt for such an eat-bush at O'olo, the Tongan; and O'olo looked up at them mightily, and respected them as a dog does a man, though sometimes he said: "I wish God h

enly stricken with her beauty that he had hardly the sense to make way for her to pass. Slim and graceful, with her glossy hair gathered at the nape with a ribbon, and her bright lavalava kilted to the knee, she gave O'olo a glance as sparkling as moonlight on a pool, all

close he held it out, saying: "Oh, lady, here is a little worthless gift!" She took it smiling, and put it behind her ear, and had it been a pig or a

man, "and if you like aute blossoms

," she returned, "and I shall be glad of the blossoms, fo

for the son of Amatuanai, the chief, and

nder where you see that nameless-animal rooting in the slough-though to God a Tongan i

of the exalted I'i family, of Safotulafai, and her grandfather was Tu'imaleali'ifano, and her great-grandfather had been Tu-ia'ana. Yet as she went on, the memory of O'olo stayed with her like the scent of frangipani, and for all he w

nvention demands; and Polo, bribed with sugar cane, sucked and chewed at the pieces O'olo peeled for him, his shaven head untroubled by the woes of his elders. They, alas, were very wretched, for O'olo had saved up two dollars, which was what to get married costs, and was urging Evanitalina to run away with him to Atua; while she, with superior wisdom called his proposal

that their passion might be compared to a mountain, up one side of which they climbed in joy and gladness, to descend on the other in alienation.

d one in the stricken person. O'olo spent his two dollars in riot and debauchery, and when released from prison fell into greater evil, so that his communion-ticket was

helpers like a white man. A bottle of explosion-water held no more than half a coconut, yet it was sold for ten cents, and it was a perplexity that anybody liked it, for it shot up your nose like the rush of a bat, and made you choke and sneeze, as Evanitalina discovered when once Viliamu brought her some. But it was a fine thing to be ab

or her almost every Sunday in a buggy, and took her driving like a white lady, to Vailele or Vaitele or Utumapu; Carl of the ringing laugh, and jolly, smiling face, and tattooed girl-fish on his arm, who cou

on the brink, like a diver pausing before the plunge, her eyes would alight on O'olo, smolderingly regarding her from afar, and then her whole strength would turn to water, and not for anything would she have married Carl, though all Savalalo bel

ourge, and inhabiting the jail more frequently than Siosi's roof-tree; and nightly, when he was free, he caroused with low companions, drinking gin, and

l, exclaiming: "I will die, I will die!" And then he would fall, with his beautiful hair all matted with blood, and his beautiful body next to lifeless, though with his purpose unattained, owing to the thickness of his skull. Surely no person in hell was ever more unhappy th

riplings by way of rent, both of whom were subscribed with unwillingness, though neither was O'olo. This Evanitalina learned with joy, for death was in the air and bloody fighting nigh at hand, and her tenderness for O'olo, lying secret in her bosom, like a red-hot coal, was fanne

iving men, pierced with wounds, and lying in their blood-one hot afternoon while nothing stirred except the flies, and even these buzzed sleepily, Evanitalina of a sudden was roused by the sound of steps, and looking up, beheld a warrior advancing towards the hous

ed except her love, which rose tumultuously within her like a wave bursting between rocks, and foaming white

face so close to hers that his breath was on her cheek. "Doubtless I shall die, for with many s

ing her voice, and speaking in a tremble. "The judge allotted you tw

or it was exactly sixteen days, even as she said, she tallying it every morning with a little stone; and it spoke to

overnment is nothing, nor the King, nor the quarrel more than that of gulls on a rock, or

lore thee to remain behind, though I thought my name had long ceased to

e cruel than thee to me, nor any bat more blind to worth, and because

Did Viliamu gain me for all his wealth and position, or did Carl the half-caste take me to wife? I was truer to thee than ever thou wast to me, and nightly I wept, and held the memory of thee in my arms, like a mother whose babe is dead. And th

of a near relation. He had learned many things since he had become bad, and knew better than before the gulf that lay between an eat-bush like himself and a member of the renowned I'i

ry or die and to that I am determined as never was man before. If I come back it shall be as one famous for prowess, bearing heads that I have taken, and with chiefs eager to adopt me. Thus shall I return, an eat-bush no longer nor despised, but a David who has slain his Go

head tossing in the air amid shouts and triumph. Indeed, so lost was he in wretchedness that he was taken unawares by Samuelu on his way inland from a deacons' meeting, who, convulsed, seized a coconut branch, and ran at him, crying: "Let there be a going, thou worthless one! Fly, thou of the Belial family, and be quick with it, else I shall whip thee hence like a cur!"

he whistle of a bullet, or earn the chance of distinction. In the army, too, little thought was taken of food, so that one banana was given for breakfast, and for dinner a coconut, which O'olo found hard, he having always been a hearty eater, and accustomed to palusami and luxuries. The monotony also, was unendurable, especially when the tobacco was gone, and one was forbidden to move, being condemned to sit hungry and distress

s due to the backwardness of his rulers and the tightness of their leash. When at last the advance was ordered on the Mataafa stronghold he was noticeable for his leap

ss ax, and knife meet knife, in the final charge; so that, with wisdom, he shot little in order not to tire himself, and hugged the ground in a manner suggestive of terror rather than boldness, for to be killed here was useless and foreign to his purpose, fame resting in the fort, and there the heads to be taken. Thus

, and for thunder the roar of their explosion, and for the raging sea the crash of blows, given and taken, and the sobbing breath of men. Here the Tongan rock withheld the enemy, while the army of the Government rolled over the wall in a resistless torrent, and with tumult and fury beset the Mataafas until they fled. Now, O'olo, with cool

e earth, yet still would I take thy head!" To which the fallen warrior made answer: "I am Tangaloa, the high-chief of Leatatafili, in Savai'i, and the property I speak of is no myth, and all of it thine if thou wilt spare me." To which O'olo replied: "And when I should claim it, verily thou wouldst forget thy covenant, and order thy young men to chastise me forth, they laughing at the cheat, and I with neither head nor property, and the back of me lacerated with blows!" Then the old chief fell into a great tremble, repeating: "No, no," his flesh shrinking on his bones, and horr

s of his knife, he undesirous of showing too great a willingness,

y I perceive the worth of true dealing with every man, for all my past years

ing to feel for him the tenderness of a son, he that had never had a father until this moment, and now having gained one of the loftiest rank; and he raised him lovingly, and b

nt so greedy were the warriors for his head. All that day he crouched beside him, with neither water to drink nor food to eat, guarding Tangaloa preciously; and had it not been for the confusion that attends the finish of a battle, and the lessening of authority that follows, he woul

t his father to his feet, so destroyed was the old man by weakness and disinclination, and he was as a sinking canoe, or a sting ray flopping on the reef, and abandoned by the tide. But O'olo persevered, dragging and supporting him until coconuts were reached, where he climbed a tree and threw down nui in abundance; and as the

ains, and going eastward circuitously, and making no sign or stir until the close of the war, and the withdrawal of the Tuamasanga from A'ana. To this Tangaloa agreed without argument

hat it was as though the earth had closed over them. In this manner were many hours spent until at last Tangaloa fell exhausted on a bank of ferns, saying: "More I cannot do." Then O'olo built a fire to warm his parent, who was perishing of cold, and rubbed his legs, and shaped a bough for his pillow, and kissed him lovingly; and when the old man said: "I am convinced

ero, and as the first to leap the fort. Of these there was a fewness, for the most preferred to laud themselves or their relations rather than another, and accordingly most of the chatter was scornful of O'olo, and to his discredit. But Evanitalina knew that O'olo was no coward, and her misgiving was that he was dead, whic

compassion of the other maids lavished itself upon her, for they saw that she was dying of grief for her beloved; and at night, when wooed under the stars, they spoke with tenderness of O'olo and Evanitalina, and of their love so cruelly ruptured; so that every one wept, even young men who previously ha

"Soon I shall pass beyond the skies on my last malanga"; an once when she saw a wilted aute, she said: "Such am I, once blooming and now

was the house of Samuelu, the clergyman? Then being greeted, and answered, "Yes," the three old gentlemen ceremoniously advanced, and ranged themselves within the eaves, saying that they had come on a wooing-party of sixty boats with Cloud-of-Butterflies, the young chief of Leatatafili, who was seeking a wife. At this, marveling greatly, Samuelu informed

scend to receive the visitor and his gifts, she answered with bewilderment that it was as her father wished, at which Samuelu said, "Yes," with no great willingness, desiring to continue his sermon, and dreading the outlay in 'ava for

ot, running. Then, shaking the ground with its progress the procession marched into view; and of pigs there seemed two hundred, and of men a number beyond counting; and at the head were youths, throwing their rifles in the air as they sang and danced. But of these things Evanitalina was scarcely heedful, for with breathless body and

E

uy him out. It was a good little station, and far better than I could have hoped for at the money I had to offer, with a new tin roof and a water tank and a copra she

ozer; quite a bit of pearl shell, and Tom's book showing how he had cleared thirty-three hundred dollars in a year. He had boils something awful, and for the last two yea

and tacked it to the shed door, besides giving the natives receipts in advance that he had died a natur

hands when Tom says, over a good-by nip of Square-face: "O

?" sa

ways," explains Tom, "and it'd go against my co

ee her,"

as I sized her up, and admired her splendid black hair that was bound by a red ribbon at the nape of her neck, very coquettish and attractive. I've always liked that proud, to-hell-with-you look in a girl, and it

she spoke something in Kanaka t

y if you whip

ak the ice by pulling her down on my knee. But she struggled

to take him aboard. He ups as though to kiss the girl good-by, but she sprang back from him, as fierce as she had been with me-fiercer, I guess; and when he caught her she turned away her head like she hated him. Then he swore and stumbled out of the house without another word or anything, while me a

ung very jaunty from side to side, now it's low and now it's high, and sometimes it's thick and sometimes it's thin, and sometimes the modest-and-quiet is the dressy way of it. She took care of the house very nice, and what few clothes and things we had were arranged most tidy in three chests with bell locks. I never hear a little bell ting-a-ling to-day but what it brings those days back

a home than I'd ever had in my wandering, lonely, up-and-down life. She was quick to learn, and loving to beat the band, yet ever kind of imperious and saucy like I belonged to her instead of its being the other way around. She had no idea of white people-used to say they looked like Kanakas who had been drowned for a week-and was most scornful how it was always copra, copra, copra with us.

ny a little present that made her eyes sparkle-such pretty eyes as they were, and so full of fun-gold fish, and rolls of silk, and music boxes or a trade hat. It was always a standing joke that she was tired of me, and was going to run away with them; and if they were quite old, like Captain Smith or Billy Baker, there wasn't

t I think something must have broken in her brain. She was never the same afterwards; not that she was always mourning, I don't mean that-but she grew cranky and queer and changed in every way. She would start into a fury at a word, and throw things about, and scream. She would tell the most awful lies about how I had treated her,

moldering under ground, and so just took my medicine for a whole miserable year and let it go at that. Every misfortune I've had in life I seem to trace to what was

, there was no haggling over valuations, nor any backwardness or suspicion, though in the rush I was in not to hold the schooner over long, it would have been easy to beat me out of a hundred dollars or two. They pulled us off to the vessel-me an

all the world seems nothing else. It came over me what a prisoner I'd been up there, and how much I had paid in unthought-of ways for that keg of Chile money. Rosie

running down to a shaky wharf, and a busted bookkeeper coming in every Tuesday night to post my books. I was a South Sea merchant now, and was reaping the fruit of all them lonely slaving days on the Line. No more pajamas neither, but a clean, white suit every day, and with Rosie perking up like she did, them were real good times for me, and pleasant to look back on; a

my heart did, to almost bursting, at such a rise in life, and one so unexpected and undreamed of. It hardly seemed it could be me the police touched their caps to, or the consuls confabbed with about local affairs as they dropped in to buy a

I married Rosie proper and right, thinking a Councillor ought to set an example in his community; and every one was very cordial to me about it, especially in my own ward, where two or three of them

her eyes burying like a pig's, and the whole of her shaking as she walked. She was ashamed to go out any more except by night, sulking all day indoors, instead, and rocking in a hammock. As I said before, she'd never been right since Benny's death, and though she had pulled up for a time and ac

ing over her but a single dirty garment, and pull down whole shelves of stuff out of sheer devilment, screaming with rage. She slandered everybody, and reflected on every woman who was unfortunate enough to know us, so that I was sued twice for defamatio

es, and no socks-who was said to be a busted doctor landed off of a French bark. His name came up before the Council, but as he had no papers or d

ldn't but feel sorry for him, and he asks for the job of pushing my handcart around the beach, getti

c," I says. "It's hard

ing anywhere for a bite of bread and a corner of a shed to sleep in. Ain't th

ow we got acquainted, Doc and me; and a remarkably finely educated man he was, too, and I don't doubt for a minute all that he represented himself. I fixed up a small shed for him with some mats, a tin basin and a

him, and a tongue as sharp as a razor, and a line of talk as to how the world was made up of flats and sharpers, all of them hypocrites, and how there wasn't but one sin-and that was to be found out. He talked like the devil might be expected to talk,

aks, sitting there like he was air, and not passing a single remark-being, for all his faults, a gentleman through and through. At last he chucked the handcart altogether, though he went on messing with me and living in my shed, his Kanaka practice growing very extensive. It grew and grew till finally the regular doctor called a halt, and he was warned in an official letter, and told

t. What if he didn't make a whole band out of himself, with a harness holding a comb across his mouth, and a bass drum for him to kick with one foot and a tambourine to frisk with the other. My, when he started off with "The Stars and Stripes Forever" you might

eting to protest against a high-handed something, it got to be the fashion to plaster the notice of it on Doc's back, him playing under a tree for all he was worth with the sweat pouring down his face, while all hands turned out to see what was the rumpus. He made money hand over fist, a

lowing me to Council meetings, bellowing like a wildcat, and clawing the policeman who was ordered to put her out; and again and again I ha

it any longer, I was sitting in the front room, with my hea

he says,

"I'm the most mis

end some time

bles and such, even if a steamer would have taken her, which none of them would. "I'll tell you what I'd do," said Doc. "I'd give five hundred

't do tha

your money, e

ossess, lock, stock and barrel-and ten years of

t your word," he says. "The next day you'd be beating Mr. Angel out of his price-yo

ard to begin without a dollar and nothing but the clothes you stand in. But downstairs in my safe

, wondering like, "but it would

d him about the safe, for there was a shine in

he angel when he handed

the use of talking of angels? I

, wouldn't you

f the safe, and carried it up to the attic where I hid it under an old mattress. I smeared a little varnish around the combination lock with a rag, and next day I look

the table left slovenly like it was. Then she fell kind of sick, and though I felt sorry to see her doubled up and groaning, it had a good side to it, for I got a Chinaman in to cook at forty dollars a month, and he straightened things out fine and cleaned up the dirt of ages. I called in Doctor Funk, the regular physician, and for a time Rosie im

er toes, and a giant squid what was dragging her down to drown. Then of a sudden she grew very quiet, and Doc, looking close to her face, said, "Good God, she is dead!" Yes, dead, just as Doctor Funk hurried in, glaring to see Doc there, and saying something

he town followed her to the grave in the foreign cemetery, that being a kind of rule or

r than blue, yet I won't deny I was glad, too, but in a frightened kind of way, and half wishing again and again that she was back. Her running on about Benny and me before she died stuck in my thro

haring. I wondered if Miss Nelson up at the Mission would consider a man as unrefined as I was and thirty-seven years old, she so sweet and young and with such gentle, winning ways. She was a governess to their children, and that made me think she would, for no woman likes to be a dependent an

lson was, just like a man does without anything further in his head. Yet looking back on it, and the few times she had been in the store when we had spoken together, I kind of felt she liked me, and she had certainly never been in any hurry to leave; with this much

you needn't look out of the window to see if it is raining. It comes down deafening, and the iron roars with the weight and smash of it. This was how I didn'

little tattoo on it with his finger nail, I noticed he was all dressed up like I'd never seen him before

k the Lord

self. "When the mail comes in to-

ried out, utter

the sea, and stay there, with nothing but coconuts and my old accordion

ill knoc

you can't have enough

he la

five ain't much out of

I says, more mys

e square. "The two thousand

d midway on my tongue. I began to tremble instead-tremble till my hands c

ou want to, and snap your fingers in my face, but I trusted yo

ide of it very careful lest any one might be listening, and then comes tiptoeing back. It was

hat you owe, you pay. I wouldn't have ris

en went up to the attic where the bag of money was still lying under the old mattress. I brought

word, and as he went out of the doorwa

me a murderer. In the bottom of my heart I believe he did it, and there are nights when I wake up in a sweat of horror. But wouldn't it have been a dirty act to bilk him of his money, all the more as it would have been so easy? To this

was th

would you

E

riber'

and spelling in the original

errors correct

nsul change

nsul change

geon chang

eak change

sami changed

ymous change

ssium changed

kep chang

rrard chang

olula change

olula change

comber changed

bulloo changed

alolo change

alolo change

that chan

mously change

usul change