"All finish, captain," said Sasa, coming up to me cheerfully.

"Would you mind telling me what it's all about?" I asked.

"Just a little tongafiti to bring loving hearts together," said Sasa. "They threw Silver Tongue down the after hatchway, while me and the girls we pushed Rosalie down the forehold. There they are, all alone in the dark, with five hours to make it up!"

I could not help laughing at Sasa's plan, especially when under my feet I began to hear more frenzied thumping and more feminine wails. Then I recollected there wasn't five feet of headroom below, and that the place, even with the hatches off, was hot enough to boil water in.

"They'll die down there, Sasa," I said.

"No fear," said Sasa. "Rosalie is half Samoa, and as for Silver Tongue—if he get roast like his own bread nobody care a banana."

"But, Sasa—" I protested.

"Now you go flirt with some my girls," she said, "and don't bother your old head about nothings!"

"But, my dear girl—" I protested.

"They'll do very nicely, thank you," said Sasa, interrupting me, "and if they're hungry, isn't there ham sandwich? And if they're thirsty, isn't there claret punch in a milk can? And as for lights—true lovers don't want no lights!"

"Well, Sasa," I said, "I dare say it's a bright idea, and that you deserve the greatest credit for arranging it all; but for the lord's sake, let me off the ship before you remove the hatches."

"Oh, no," said Sasa, "everybody stay and see the fun!"

Fun, indeed, I thought, as I heard a terrific pounding below, and an uproar that would have been creditable to a sinking liner. The deck shook with sledge-hammer blows, and a lot of glasses tumbled off one of our improvised tables. Then we heard what was obviously a revengeful wrecking 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 well. Sasa stamped on the deck with her little foot and cried out: "Be quiet, you silly baker!" But the silly baker only roused himself to a renewed ferocity, and, instead of calming down, went off again like twenty-five bunches of firecrackers under a barrel—and large firecrackers, too.

Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour; then at length he subsided, finding, I suppose, that one German baker, however infuriated, was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck. By the end of the second hour we had forgotten all 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 a day of reckoning, but I held my peace and forebore to disquiet my pretty hostess, who was the life and soul of the whole party aboard, and whose silvery laughter chimed in so sweetly with the tropic night and the rippling gurgle of water along our keel.

It was past three o'clock when we picked up the Mission light and ran back to our moorings off the Firm. Then the question arose as to who would uncage our love-birds and bear the first brunt of Silver Tongue's explosion. I confess I was very little eager for the job, and felt a peculiar sinking in the region of my watch pocket as we unlocked the after-hatch and rolled it softly back, Sasa, 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 up at us grimly through a sort of mist. I waited for him to spring to his feet and throw himself like a lion on my shrinking form; but, instead of doing so, he pressed his arms closer round Rosalie and smiled—yes, by Jove, smiled—and, if you'll take the word of a retired master mariner, winked, with a peculiar, tender and calfish expression that in anybody else would have been called skittish.

"How goes it, old man?" I said.

"Gaptain," he returned in the tone of a clarionet tootling a love passage in grand opera, "me and Rosalie invites you all to the Bublic Hall Thursday night to dance at our wedding!"



PROFESSOR NO NO

It was years ago that he came to Uvea (said little Nofo, as we sat side by side on a derelict spar and watched the sun go down into the lagoon)—years and years and years ago, when I was an unthinking child and knew naught of men nor their crooked hearts. 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 laid them in a cup beside him. He was landed from a ship that forthwith sailed and was never seen again—he and three tents, and a boat and innumerable boxes, all numbered from one to a thousand, and a nigger named Billy Hindoo to care for him and cook.

The Government gave him a piece of land next the lagoon, where he pitched his tents and lived; and they put a taboo round the land so that none might cross, and also a notice on a board, saying, "Be careful of the white man." Here he unpacked his things, and arranged a place for Billy Hindoo, and another place, open at the sides, where at a table he was daily served with sardines and bottled beer. He was named Professor, and his occupation, 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, "No, no!" Were you to approach him as he bathed in the lagoon, marveling at his unsightliness, he would beat the water like one delirious, and scream again, "No, no!" So, in time, his name became changed from Professor into No No, or, as many called him in one word, Professor No No; and we all grew to hate him, as did also Billy Hindoo, who was generous and loving, and gave away unstintedly sardines and biscuit to those he favored.

But Professor No No, unexpectedly returning in his boat with a new dead fish no bigger than that (a fish, too, of so little worth that one couldn't eat it without feeling ill for the succeeding week), discovered Billy Hindoo dividing 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 him away with execrations. Then he sat down at the table and drank bottled beer, and held up the fish to his blind eyes, and at intervals shouted out, "No, no; No, no," as we all crowded about the taboo line, watching and wondering.

The next day Billy Hindoo came back, but Professor No No repelled him with a stick, having counted the beer and the sardines and the biscuit, and found many missing. Then Billy Hindoo sought a place in the house of Tamua, and being a man of subtle mind, though without paper on which to write, carved the date of his rejection on a tree, together with the names of witnesses who had seen 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 them; how, indeed, he was Antichrist, and that his coming to Uvea had been foretold in Revelations. Whether this was true or false, it was evident that Professor No No believed not in God; for it was seen he went never to church, and remembered (when strangers asked him if he were a missionary) that he would grow beside himself and roar, "No, no!" snorting like a suffocating person.

Now there lived in the village a chief named Malamalama, a young man who owned a fine house and much land, and was withal so handsome and gay that there was scarce a woman but whose eyes shone at the sight of him. And Malamalama's wife was named Salesa, and the strange thing about Salesa 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 Malamalama's sight, for she was without family, and what Kanaka blood she possessed was that of slaves; but the chief must needs have his way, being a man of imperious temper and willful under advice; and so the little out-islander was married to him and elevated to the rank of chieftainess.

Then her arrogance and pride, previously concealed by the humbleness of her station, broke out with the fierceness of consuming flames. Were you to pass her on the road and say, "Talofa, Salesa," she often deigned not to return your greeting; and when people came to her house she did not like, she would say to them, "Go away," like that, 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 made the most trifling returns for pigs or costly presents. So in time she was left alone in her fine house, and though she had a sewing machine and a musical box, and goldfish in a glass jar, and an umbrella with a glittering handle, she spent her days in yawning, and her nights in telling Malamalama what a fool she had been to marry him.

After the manner of men, Malamalama's love increased in the proportion of her disdain, and there was nothing he would not do to try and please her. He took her on board every succeeding ship, and remained for hours in the trade room 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 take a bolt." And Malamalama, who perhaps wanted an anchor for his boat, or a little, tiny, trifling pea-soupo of paint, had perforce to do without either, and paddle ashore again, poorer, indeed, than many of his serfs and dependents.

On these occasions also Salesa showed a lawless deportment among the whites that put her good name in jeopardy and caused many to wonder and gossip. She would sit at the cabin table and drink beer and eat sardines, saying saucily, "Me white mans, too," as she 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 her on their knees and kissed her. Be that true or false, Malamalama grew to hate the sight of a ship; and sometimes, when he and Salesa went on board together, he showed her a sharp knife, and said, "Be careful, you wicked white woman, or I shall kill you."

She was as changeable as a little child, and had humors, too, of tenderness and contrition, when she would put her arms round her husband's neck and be-darling him, saying, "I love you! I love you!" and 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, "Sell me to one of the captains for a whaleboat and let me go." But Malamalama only loved her the more, and his handsome face grew sullen and angry as he threatened again to kill her if she misbehaved.

Now when Professor No No came to live with us on the lagoon, Salesa was beside herself with curiosity, and heaped presents on Billy Hindoo in order to learn about his master. But Billy Hindoo knew nothing but his own stutter, and though he took the presents and came constantly to Salesa's house, very little 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 of glass, and he never turned round as the party halted at the taboo line and coughed deprecatorily in order to attract his attention. Then Salesa, who feared neither devil nor man, took the baskets in her arms and stepped across the taboo, saying in a voice of sweetness, "Professor No No! Professor No No!"

He sprang from the table and rushed at her, waving his arms, and screaming as was his wont, "No, no! No, no!" while she, overcome with terror, dropped the gifts and fled like a sea mew on the wings of the wind. That night all Uvea joked about her discomfiture, while she sat in her house and cried, and Billy Hindoo was invited everywhere to tell the story 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 the satisfaction of her purpose. For the white man, thus left to himself, grew increasingly dirty and uncared for; and his camp, once so clean under the care of Billy Hindoo, became as a pigsty of empty cans and bottles. Nothing therein was washed, and the savor of Professor No No and his camp blew noisomely across the taboo line as one walked to leeward.

One day, after spying out that he had already sailed out for more fish to look at through bits of glass, Salesa crept into the settlement and began to make it clean again. She carried away all the tins and bottles; she swept the 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 with a clean cloth, and on it she placed a bottle of beer and a tin of sardines under a wire netting and three ship's biscuits in a row. Then she went back and hid in the undergrowth, waiting and waiting, like a warrior in an ambush.

But Professor No No made no sign as he landed from his boat, nor did he seem to perceive that anything unusual had taken place in the time he had been gone. He drank the bottle of beer and ate the sardines and biscuit, never troubling himself whence they had come; and while Salesa waited and waited with a suffocating heart, he looked at dead fish through bits of glass. But day by day she returned to his camp with the assiduity 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 little closer as she spread his table and laid out his bottle of beer and the sardines and biscuit; then it came about that she even touched him with impunity, and sat beside him in a chair as he continued to look at dead fish through bits of glass. At last she dared to speak, telling him softly the names of the dead fish, which he wrote down in a little book, and informing him also that her name was Salesa, and that she loved him.

And she, so defiant and proud, became as another person; so that she was kind not only to Professor No No, but to others whom she had previously treated with contumely. She carried the white man's packages when he went abroad, his photograph box and all manner of apparatus and tools, and the 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!" when she touched his things. On the contrary, her wisdom increased in such matters, becoming in time even as his own, so that she also took photographs, and hammered off pieces of coral from the reef, and grew excited over little, common, worthless fish that stung you if you touched them.

It is not to be supposed that Malamalama watched with any equanimity this increasing friendship between Professor No No and his wife, or that the constant tale of scandal and evil-doing fell on heedless ears. He beat Salesa repeatedly with a stick, 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 beat her with a stick, the more ardent grew her love for Professor No No; and when he talked with her and argued, she would answer unabashed that whites were whites and Kanakas were Kanakas, and that it was ill to mix the oil and water of the races.

"But he is overgrown with hair like a dog," said Malamalama, "except on his head, which glistens like a sting ray in the sun, and he is altogether hideous and frightening. It is not reasonable that anyone should prefer him to me."

"But there is that in his head which makes him beautiful," said Salesa.

"Lo! I have things in my head also," said Malamalama, "and I pass my life, besides, like a man, diving for shell, and cutting copra on my property, and attending to the affairs of the church where I am deacon, and finding everywhere a better employment than that of looking at dead fish through bits of glass."

"Malamalama," said Salesa, "divorce me and let me go, and take thy choice of all the maids of Uvea in my stead. Professor No No loves me not, but I am his bondslave in love, and care for no other man but him."

Now this was very good advice, and the chief would have done well to follow it. But there is in men a pride about their women that blinds their eyes to sense, and Malamalama, instead of heeding, grew, on the contrary, 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 against the woman who had so successfully supplanted him, and was eager to revenge himself on both. And one day he brought not only a new tale, but a bottle of gin he had managed to pilfer from the camp of Professor No No.

Malamalama began to drink the gin, and the more he drank the more he began to feel the aching of his spirit. He stopped the passers-by and told them of his wrongs; he rolled over in the road, so that he was all dirty, calling out curses on his wife 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 and got his rifle and four boxes of cartridges and walked unsteadily toward the lagoon, weeping and laughing and beating the air with his loaded gun. And I, then only a little child, followed him at a distance, wondering and mocking with the others.

Now on this occasion it happened that Salesa was away in the boat, and Professor No No, all alone, was sitting at his table and looking at dead fish through bits of glass. Malamalama stopped at the taboo line, not daring to cross it, and withheld, besides, by the notice on the tree; and he was so tipsy with the gin that he could barely shout, nor hold the gun up to his shoulder. But he fired, as straight 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 around and around in a circle, and then inside this tent and that, so that it was laughable to watch him popping in and out like a terrified rat. And Malamalama, so overcome with gin that he could barely see, fired and fired and fired from the four boxes of his cartridges. Then, when all was finished, he rose and went home, while the children crowded the line and shouted, "Professor No No, art thou dead?"

That night there was a meeting of the ancients in the speak-house, and all the culprits were there under guard to receive a judgment. Malamalama was fined one dollar for being drunk and fifteen dollars for firing unwarrantably at Professor No No; 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 surrendered to the matrons of the village to receive a lashing for her misconduct. Then Tanielu, the pastor, prayed that God's wrath might be averted from so wicked a village, and made a beautiful parable about the Garden of Eden and the serpent.

One might have thought that this would have healed the matter, and that a punishment so nearly equal would have been submitted to with humility and grace. But, on the contrary, the quarrel went from bad to worse, so that Tanielu, the pastor, would say sorrowfully from the pulpit that Uvea was like another hell, but with four devils instead of one. Malamalama, 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, shouting "No, no!" like a lion; and Billy Hindoo, of whom everyone had tired on account of his light fingers and calumniating tongue, grew increasingly burdensome to his adopted family, and spent most of his time in stoning Professor No No from a safe distance and demanding his wages even to that day, together with a passage at once to the white country.

During this season no ship at all came to Uvea, though Professor No No watched unceasingly for one, and likewise Billy Hindoo, and likewise Malamalama, the chief; and Tanielu prayed and prayed and prayed without end, "Lord, send Thou speedily a vessel and rid us of these intruders." The white man, for all his wisdom, was cowardly beyond belief, and so fearful of Malamalama 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. Were he to unmoor his boat, lo! she was there swimming in its wake and demanding to be taken in, lest she drown; were he to sit down and quietly look at dead fish through bits of glass, lo! there also was she beside him in a chair; were he to slumber in a shady place during the afternoon, he would awake with his head in her lap or with her kisses against his lips.

So weak, indeed, was his heart, that he was not even grateful for her assistance against Billy Hindoo, who came constantly, this day and that, with unfailing regularity, to throw stones at his former master and cry threateningly, "Hi, yi! give me wages even to this day, and return me to the white country according to thy covenant." 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 complained. Then she was whipped again by the matrons, and Billy Hindoo was fined for throwing stones, and Professor No No was fined yet a second time for stealing away Malamalama's wife, and Malamalama was fined for leading a life of infamy and riot, and Tanielu said again from the pulpit, "Hasten, Lord, or Thy servants perish!"

Thus the days passed in unending strife and bitterness, terrible now to be recalled. When Malamalama took a new wife, the former wife's family would lie in wait and try to kill him; and other husbands, before exemplary and well conducted, growing restive to 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, and the sky, as far as one's eye could reach, remained like shining copper, without a breath. It was plainly seen that God, in anger, was laying His hand heavily on Uvea; and lo! He spoke through the pastor Tanielu, saying, "Repent, repent, or else ye perish!"

There was a great meeting of the ancients in the speak-house; and one ancient spoke for Malamalama, and another ancient spoke for Salesa, and another ancient spoke for Professor No No, and still another ancient spoke for Billy Hindoo; and the whole matter was inquired into from the first day and debated in turn by all the ancients, and a final judgment 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 themselves forthwith before the pastor Tanielu; and Billy Hindoo was commanded to go back to his master and remain within the taboo line under pain of death, and an ancient was appointed to visit him daily to lash him if he misbehaved even in the smallest matter; and then the whole meeting prayed first for rain, and then that God might send a ship.

When the new arrangement was with difficulty explained to the white man, he was as one crazed, waving his arms and screaming out "No, no!" without cessation; and he persisted thus, to the scandal 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 Professor No No and Salesa and Billy Hindoo were escorted homeward to their camp; and then everyone breathed with relief and congratulated one another on so peaceful and satisfactory a settlement.

But the ancients were still in their places when Salesa returned, saying that Professor No No had repulsed her; and behind her was Billy Hindoo, equally 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 covenant; and behind them both was Professor No No with his head tied in a towel, where the pastor had hurt him, cursing and reviling like a maniac.

Then the ancients held another meeting; and lo! it was a secret meeting; and Tanielu spoke for God, and everyone made speeches in turn; and it was recalled, with eloquent outbursts, how peaceful and happy Uvea had been in the days preceding 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, declaring that he was the worst of all. Thus, like a battle rolling to and fro, Salesa, Professor No No, and Billy Hindoo were each in turn imperiled; and when day broke, their fate, though they knew it not, had been finally settled by the ancients.

Professor No No's boat was carried by twenty men from the lagoon shore, where it lay, over to the ocean beach; and with it was borne sardines and biscuit and beer from the white man's store; and the glass barrels 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 made ready, Billy Hindoo was forced to seat himself in the bow of the boat; and in the stern were put Salesa and Professor No No, side by side, the center being filled with the cargo of provisions and water.

And Salesa laughed and joked with the men, begging them to take out Billy Hindoo, or to give him a boat of his own; and saying wildly, when denied, that she was going where none might whip her now, to find a beautiful island whereon 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 Hindoo shook like a wet dog in the bow, whimpering, "Hi, yi! me British subject! me no likey!" babbling deliriously besides of his wages even to that day, and of the unfulfilled covenant with its passage to the white country in a ship.

Then the sail was hoisted and the sheet put into Salesa's hand; and in this wise the boat was shoved into deep water, and her bow headed straight to seaward. Then Tanielu fell on his knees and prayed that Uvea might be delivered forever and ever of such an infliction; and the young men formed a line with their 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; and waited and waited and waited until it disappeared. Then, lo! there were explosions of thunder and lightning, and the rain descended in torrents, and the little children all threw off their clothes and ran about rejoicing in the wet, while the elders looked at one another, and said, "Lo, Uvea is delivered!"



CAPTAIN ELIJAH COE

Puna Punou lies in 14th South exactly, though the writer keeps back the longitood for reasons that will soon be understood by the gentle reader—if the gentle reader is patient and won't skip. Not that there is any buried treasure there, or any foolishness of that kind; it's girls mostly, and pearl shell and 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 back to the days before the bottom had dropped out of copra, and there was still money to be made in beach-la-mar and fungus. Oh, my, yes! a long time ago, before steam ever got into the Group, before law and order and compulsory vaccination, and an hour and a half of Deputy Commissioner every nine months.

It was always a mighty fine island to look at, rising sheer from the sea to basaltic cliffs, and high needlelike pinnacles, and forested solid from the water's edge to almost the top; and off the main settlement of Fale a Lupo there was good holding ground 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 smell of it like a child happy at getting home from school. I guess the people there helped a lot, too, for they were the handsomest in the Pacific, and it was a regular port of call for the whalers to take in green stuff, girls, fresh water, and firewood.

In the old days it was the Rev. John Geer who ran the missionary mill, and taught the heathen to put their pennies in the plate and wear pants—not that they ever did the last to any alarming 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 after twenty-one years of it the Geers returned home to Connecticut, and the Tweedies were landed from the Olive Branch barkentine, to take their places in that section of the world's vineyard.

Tweedie was a hay-colored little man, narrer chested and tallowy, but if ever there was a copper-riveted Christian from Christianville I guess he was it! Meek! Why he was happy to get slapped, he was that pleased to turn the other cheek; and 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 there was an angel from heaven, with the prettiest blue eyes, and hair like streaming gold, and the cherriest lips you ever saw out of a chromo, and teeth whiter than—than—(it don't sound right to say a shark's) it was that peerless creature.

How Tweedie could have captured such a bang-up stunner was hard to understand then, and harder afterwards. A king on his throne might have been glad to win Alethea Tweedie for his queen, and captains and supercargoes would 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 it's all women for miles, and they rate anything a man that can raise a whisker! Thrown away, that's what the beach called it, and misdoubted whether Tweedie wasn't a girl, too, only with drill trousers instead of panties.

In all them brown faces and tanned leathery white ones you can imagine what a pink rosebud she seemed to be; and it wasn't like that she stopped at that, for she could sing like a nightingale and talk to beat the band; and her 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 I loved the ground her little feet walked on. Not that there was anything out of the way in that. We all did, down to Portuguese Joe, and Billy Jones's cousin; and as for Elijah Coe, he simply give one yelp and keeled over!

Coe was the captain and owner of the Peep o' Day topsail schooner, and had been trading about the Group for a matter of eight years. In all my seafaring days I never saw his match for dare-deviltry or courage, though a quieter man to look at there never was. He was about forty years 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 reckon perhaps he likely was, for he was splendidly educated, with rows on rows of books in his cabin, and a cyclopediar six feet long. The mate said he knew everything in it up to R, not to speak of working lunars in a saucer of quicksilver, and reckonizing squid by its Latin name.

No one knew how he had got the money to buy his ship, which was a remarkable fine vessel and fitted up regardless. Some said there was once a name on the brass bell aft, which had been filed down careful and worked over with emery paper afterwards; but I never could see no sign of it myself, though I never went aboard but I took a good look; and others who said it was Labor. He certainly knew a lot about the Westward, and I heard him, one day, giving Captain Rick the directions to enter 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 was John Rau, the mate, a bullet-headed Belgian, who used to walk just like he did and copy all his little ways slavish, reading the cyclopediar, too, and stopping at R from discipline. And Lum, the China cook, a freak of a fellar, with coal-black hair all round his head like a girl's, and who'd out-Coe Coe till you'd split. The rest of the crew was just the usual thing—Rotumah boys, an Highwayman or two, and some Nieues—sometimes the same, sometimes different—like on any island vessel.

It was some time before Captain Coe got on to the Tweedies, or Alethea, as I suppose I ought to say, for nobody ever took no particular stock in the he-Tweedie. He ran acrost her first when he was ashore doctoring some of his native friends, and handing out pain-killer and salts 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 eager to let him go, and once she took his Tahiti hat and held it in both her hands like she would prevent him. And he didn't seem to want to go neither, though he wrastled for his hat, very perlite and gay, and I could see the glisten of her white teeth through the spyglass.

The next day he called in state, with the skull of a shark in a silk handkerchief, and a man carrying a crate of onions. Oh, it may sound common to you, but it's like sending flowers to your lady-love in Puna Punou, and I've seen a year pass without the sight of one! I guess he walked in on velvet, and it is certain he 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 polkadot neckerchief; and I'm blest if John Rau wasn't there, too, likewise polka-dotted; and that there Chinaman tagging along behind, rigged the same, only with earrings extra, and taking a back seat out of respeck! Afterwards they all went up to the Mission house in a body, Tweedie jumping in with an address, and everybody singing except the Chinaman, who was made to stop!

You mustn't think for a minute that we traders knew the missionary or that he knew us, or that the beach took any part in this except at a distance. There's no love lost between missionaries and traders. That's what made it so strange to see 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 didn't talk to the Tweedies, I guess there was mighty little that went on there we didn't know of—whether it was turtle steak for breakfast, or the tiff they had about her wearing too gauzy a dress at the party Coe gave aboard the Peep o' Day.

He did it up in style, with bunting and Chinese lanterns and the king, and afterwards there was fireworks. Oh, my, yes! a regular blow-out, with the crew in new jumpers and two boatloads of flowers and moso'oi! We all asked one another where it was going to end, what with the picnic next day, and him always at the Mission house. But 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, not to be behindhand neither, cavorted into the holy swim with a whoop and a bang! The captain went off terrific—like everything he did—making Billy Jones's cousin marry his wife, and Peter Extrum marry his; and there was more half-caste baptizing and squealing and certificating than I remember since the tidal wave of Eighty-one!

Coe put it all down to conviction and a change of heart, but anybody could see it was Alethea Tweedie who was his religion. When he prayed, which he used to do tremendous, it was all the time to Mrs. Tweedie; and when he said the kingdom of heaven, you knew mighty well that to him it was the coral Mission house on the hill. He put her on a pedestal a mile high, and kept 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 feet high and straight as a dart, and every girl in the island was wild about him; and she had an imperious little way of treating him like he was a favorite dog who she was proud to show off being master of. She sent him her canary, which was all she had in the world except her clothes, and wrote a little piece how it would sing to him at sea and soothe his rugged bosom.

This wasn't all he got neither, for she was a great one with her needle, and did texts better nor a Sailors' Home. Coe's cabin was more like a little Bethel than the inside of a trading ship, for there was six of them, and a red worsted dog extra, playing with a blue worsted 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 fancy lamp, and said a gentleman ought to know where to stop. He was an awful thin-skinned kind of Christian when it came to any remarks being passed on Mrs. Tweedie, and Tom has a scar there to this day, though Coe made it up to him afterwards with a melodian worth nine dollars.

But Coe wasn't the only dog around the Mission house. Mrs. Tweedie started up another, a scamp of a chief named Afiola. In every community there's some fellar who's at the root of all the mischief that happens, so that if anybody gets speared of a dark night, or a girl is missing from home, you know just 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 that he had a hand in taking off the Chinaman at Oa Bay. A regular bad lot, and, like every big scalawag, every little scalawag had to tail along with him, too, for company and mutual protection; so his houses was the kind of Bowery of Puna Punou, with the whalers going to him to buy girls, and all that.

There were higher chiefs than Afiola in the settlement—five or six of them, at least, not to speak of the king—but none of them seemed able to do a thing to stop him. They were all a slack lot at any time, and thought excommunicating him enough, and taking away his 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 customers and well armed, and could line up a dozen rifles in the twinkling of an eye. We often talked it over among ourselves how to break the gang up, but, as he always left the whites alone, and was even a favorite with the worst, it ended like it begun—in smoke.

This Afiola wasn't of any particular age, because the natives don't know when they are born, and have nothing to go by like dates and sich. I suppose Afiola was somewheres around thirty, for he had two children, about eight or nine each, a girl and a boy, who lived with him in his house, together 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 his pock-marked face and the wickedest eyes I ever saw in a man's head, you would have said he was a perfect gentleman, and handsome, as Kanakas go. I had never had a bit of trouble with him myself, and whenever I put business in his way he had always come down prompt with pigs and mats and masoa.

It was a long time before he took any notice of the Tweedies, not going to church, and always busy raising a little hell somewheres. But when it came, it came with a bang and no mistake, and, my stars, if he didn't pull in the slack! He made up to the Mission house like he was their long-lost brother; threw fits of reformation till they took him back into church membership again; and not a blessed day passed but it was pigs or chickens or 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 yanked in such a black sheep. I read somewheres that the road to success is to trade on people's weaknesses, and the soft spot with the Tweedies was their desire to make a thundering success and leave all their predecessors in the soup. After having captured the chief white sinner, Elijah Coe, they were now hauling in the boss brown one, Afiola, and I guess they felt as pleased as a fellar who's bought a ton of shell for a condemned army musket.

My, but they were good to that man, forever inviting him to breakfast or that, and sending for him first thing if they were in a fix! It was all Afiola this, and Afiola that; and he got texts, too, from Mrs. Tweedie, and red worsted dogs, and "God Bless Our Home." By the time they had engineered him into shoes and pants, no one daring to laugh for fear he'd shoot them, they promoted him deacon, and put him on the committee for reroofing 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 to deny it. But Mrs. Tweedie she got him outside on the veranda, walking up and down with her arm through his, and pleading and going on and begging to beat the band. It shows the power she had over him, that at last he went in and asked Afiola's pardon, and the next day sent him a case of kerosene by way of reparation. I suppose if she had told him to go on his knees he would have done it, being that crazy to please her in everything.

On second thoughts, however, and after hearing how Afiola had been kicking up, he went to the king and tried to stiffen him to take a stand against Afiola, volunteering to do the job himself, if supported, and proposing to exile the fellar 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 Maunga the king was a saphead and a coward, and he couldn't see it Coe's way at all; and not having the sense to keep his mouth shut, what does he do but traipse around the settlement, telling everybody what the captain said and wanted.

After that the Mission-house door was shut in Coe's face, and when Mrs. Tweedie passed him on the road it was with her pretty head in the air, and not looking. This nearly broke the captain's heart, and if you've ever seen a dog as has been kicked out by his master, you can picture Coe for yourself. He got very down and miserable, and talked some of chucking the Group altogether and going back to the Kingsmills, or even further, and how Henderson 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 Mrs. Tweedie smiling her prettiest, vice Elijah Coe, fired! We fully thought he'd backslide onto square-face and female society, but, if anything, he grew more missionary than ever, and nearly lammed the life out of Freddy Rice for speaking disrespectful of the Virgin Mary! You see, Coe's religion, being as it was Mrs. Tweedie, didn't make no proper distinction between sects, and he just stood up for anybody who had his name in the Bible!

Then thinking, I dessay, that absence makes the heart grow fonder, he went to sea again and put in a spell of two months about the Group; and when he got back he dressed up in his best with a red silk handkerchief around his neck, sailor fashion, and a crimson sash and patent-leather shoes, and the rest of him white 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 like she did, and driving him half-mad with the things she said to him. She regularly led on the captain to admit he loved her, and then jumped on him with both her little feet for saying it, till the poor fellar stumbled out of the house feeling he had disgraced himself awful and was never to come back no more.

She wrote him letters afterwards on scented pink paper, which made him spend days and days with his head leaning on the cabin table, wanting the worsted dog back, and the canary, and saying she would tell her husband; and then 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 that there is much the same colored devil in every one of them. But to Coe, Alethea Tweedie wasn't no human being at all, but an angel straight from heaven, and to think the angel hated him was almost more than he could bear.

He turned crankier than ever, working off steam on Rau and Ah Lum, with twenty-five cents for every swear, and nothing at night but hymns. But I guess Rau and the China boy would 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. If he had turned pirate, they would have followed him just as meek, and would have scuttled ships and made passengers walk planks with the same devotion and zeal to please him!

But all this was by the way, so far as it availed the captain with Mrs. Tweedie, who passed him on the road as cold as ever, and received the swear-money disdainful, and never said "thank you" for it, though there was eighteen dollars in the bag and the biggest share Coe's. Afiola himself had been getting out of favor for two months. He couldn't manage to be deacon of the church one day, and the next pirating along the coast mad drunk on orange beer; besides, the Tweedies were getting to talk native now, and got 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 after the king, and there was more scandal over that than for all the crimes he had been guilty of; and there was a razor-backed yaller one for Tweedie, and an old sow for the queen, and porkers for the princes, and he passed insulting remarks on them till the Kanakas went wild—those that weren't of Afiola's own family, I mean; and Afiola would laugh and laugh till his great pocked face grew a dirty crimson, laying on a mat with a Winchester beside him, and sniggering as they'd bring him orange beer in a calabash.

I guess he thought he'd wind up by pulling off the biggest thing yet, for he had a kind of pride of wickedness in him, and gloried in being the bad man of Puna Punou. He wanted to top it all now, and do something that tremendous that it would shake the whole island from Fale a Lupo to Diamond Rock. Anyway, whatever 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, with scores of people looking on, while she screamed and struggled and fought, and they helpless to do anything against the line of Afiola's rifles—and Tweedie himself not four hundred yards away, organizing a Y.M.C.A. for untattooed boys, and explaining how they was to play basket ball, and learn arithmetic nights!

When I heard the news, which was right off and the moment after it happened, I had only one idea in my head, and that was to reach Captain Coe as fast as the paddles could race me off to the schooner. It is in them moments that the strong man looms up like a mountain and one's cry is for a leader. But it seemed for a spell like it was a knock-out blow for Coe, and that he couldn't grapple with the thing at all, moaning and grinding his teeth, and tearing the red-dotted handkerchief off his neck like 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 all hands, every one of them with a loaded rifle, and he with a twelve-bore gun; and if you ever saw the light of hell in a man's eyes, it was Coe as he formed us up on the beach and headed inland in a crowd. The whole settlement was buzzing like a hornet's nest, and they were beating a wooden drum in front of the king's house, and everybody was running every which way, telling the news, and how Mrs. Tweedie had been carried off by Afiola, and all screaming out at once, like natives do when excited.

Finding Afiola would be about as easy as the needle in the haystack, and the crews of a hundred Peep o' Days, and all the warriors of Fale a Lupo besides, couldn't have tracked and cornered him up the mountain. I thought Coe was acting like a hot-headed crazy fool to try, for they were bound to see him first, and could always hide if we got too 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 number of twenty or more all told. They were scared blue at the sight of the cocked rifles, and held up their hands like lambs for the Chinaman to rope them, which he did like lashing a chest and about as tender, the tears streaming down the women's faces. But there wasn't a spark of compassion in Elijah Coe, and he never give them a thought.

He was at a white heat, and his finger was just itching on the trigger of his gun, and he never started for the beach till all the Bowery was crackling in smoke and flame. Not that our eighteen or twenty was the whole of Afiola's family in the 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. Tweedie's carrying off, they weren't prepared or anything. But even in the time we were tying up the prisoners they began to turn ugly and bunch together and hoot, and all the way back to the beach it was touch and go whether they wouldn't rush us.

Not a soul durst ask Coe what he meant to do as we pitched into the water and shoved off, him sitting there so grim and fierce, with his eyes smoldering in his head like coals; but there was no sound but the straining of the rowlocks, and a whimper or two from the women, and the swish and gurgle of the water along the keel. I'll never forget that boat ride if I live to be a hundred; the drums rolling and re-rolling around the bay, and that strange humming of voices behind 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 height, but just the old-fashioned kind, slow and awful, and if the steward hadn't come round with a tray of glasses and some square-face I guess I would have just sunk right down where I was. The crew made one panic-stricken gallop for the side, and popped over, nobody trying to stop them, though Rau asked, quite calm, was he to shoot, and the captain said No. The Nieue steward was the only one that didn't go, but crouched down in the scuppers with his teeth chattering.

Then Coe leaned over the rail and talked to the prisoners in the waist; told them that he was going to string up one an hour, children and all, till Mrs. Tweedie was brought back safe; and he ordered Lum to cast loose one of the old women so that she might swim ashore and carry the news. My, if she wasn't over that rail like lightning, and striking out for home with her skinny arms! Coe knew mighty well that Afiola had a string of people up the mountain keeping 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 Kanakas for their own blood, and we had his whole family in our hands, not to speak of the two kids. It seemed almost like a waste of lives to look up and see not a speck, or the least sign whatever, that was hid under the tree tops, and it was hard to convince oneself that Coe was doing the right thing, and that from those rocky cliffs there was sharp Kanaka eyes taking us all in, with Alethea Tweedie tied hand and foot, and Afiola in a sweat about his children.

The captain sat on a chair at the forrard end of the house, smoking a cigar, and occasionally searching the woods with his binoculars. There was a stack of loaded rifles beside him, and a keg of dynamite with a loose lid to it. Some of the sticks had touch-and-go fuses to them, ready to throw if they tried boarding; and sometimes he would take out his watch and look at it hard, and every time 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 fell on his knees in the boat, though it was half full of bilge and slopped all over him; and he besought Captain Coe, by all that was holy, to stop murdering the innocent, and rattled on fast and scolding like he was in the pulpit. We was to leave it to God, he said, and went on like we was worse nor Afiola, the pitiful hound, like it wasn't his own wife we was doing our damnedest to save.

Captain Coe let him have his say, and then he leaned over the ship's side, holding to the starboard shrouds with one hand and taking the cigar out of his mouth with the other, and told him, with a most deliberate spit, as how he was going on with one every hour till Mrs. 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 or since, and you knew he'd live right up to every word he said. I guess the pastor and the student understood a little English, for when Coe finished they laid on to their oars like mad, and headed the old sieve for shore again, Tweedie in the bilge and still protesting.

At two o'clock we turned off Sosofina, Afiola's aunt. We now had three aloft, and as we rolled gently broadside on to the swell they'd swing together and swing apart till you didn't care to look at them. That hour from two to three was the very longest I ever spent in my life. It was the hottest time of day and the sun beat down unmerciful, the pitch running in the seams, and the awnings being stripped off to better fight the ship, if need be. The steward passed round sardines and buttered biscuit, and I recollect the Chinaman wolfing his right 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 off the dynamite and blow up the ship, he would have said "Aye, aye, sir!" and obeyed, respectful and willing, like the first-class seaman and navigator he was. He had served in the Belgian navy, and the habit had stuck to him. But in all of us, after all—me and Lum and John Rau and the Nieue steward—it was Coe's spirit that had raised us to this pitch, and he had blown a little of his own breath into every one of us. We were all Elijah Coe's that day, and it was only afterwards it came over us how different we had acted from our proper selves.

Well, as I said, it was drawing toward six bells, and we were keyed up tremendous, as we might expect to see the result of our work now 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 our eye as he went on smoking his cigar, and every time he took out his watch and looked at it it seemed like my heart stopped beating.

"Three o'clock, boys!" he says, rising business-like from his chair, while Lum looked up expectant, and my gizzard seemed to shrink inside me. "Three o'clock, boys!"

He hadn't no more nor got the words out of his mouth when Rau ripped out there was a canoe coming off, and we all ran pellmell for the rail. Sure enough, there was an outrigger aiming straight for us, and the fellar in it was bent double and paddling that fast that 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, till the fellar got back something of his nerve, paddling with one hand and holding the little board aloft in the other (like he might a flag of truce), and venturing toward us slower and slower, till at last Coe reached down and took the thing from him standing up.

It was a slab of fresh-cut fuafua, about a foot long by three inches wide, and on it, written, as I heard afterwards, in blood and spit and 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 a pen, but saying as how she was unharmed and was being brought back fast, and please, he wasn't to trice up any more of Afiola's family.

The captain read it aloud to us about a dozen times, and then, his face working so he couldn't speak no more, he gripped hands with me, and then with John Rau, and not forgetting the Nieue steward, and then he went down the forward 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 panjammers, the Chinaman, patting him like he might a dog, saying, "Poor captain! Never you mind, captain! She all lite now, captain," while the prisoners broke out in a big gabble of how they were saved, and piped up with a hymn.

He wasn't the man to take anything for granted, however, and after he had sort of pulled himself together and got his second wind, so to speak, he cast loose a couple more with a message that he had to have a letter on paper from Mrs. Tweedie herself, countersigned by the king, that she was at home, safe, and no harm done. He 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 time with a rifle. Except for her paleness, which was like marble, and the bloody marks of the sinnet on her pretty wrists, you wouldn't have taken her for much different than usual; and she skipped up the ladder as sprightly as you please, and made a bee line for Elijah Coe like a schoolgirl running to her pa for the holidays.

She wanted to throw herself on her knees and kiss his hands; and when he forced her up, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, saying he was her preserver, and how he had saved her from worse than death, and so overflowing and grateful and outspoken that nobody knew where to look, least of all the captain, who turned all colors, and couldn't say anything but "You're welcome," like a ninny.

We cleared a little space for Tweedie to pray in, which was his way of celebrating, and couldn't very well be prevented, and the king followed with a speech what he'd do to Afiola when he 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 pork and some boat sails to wrap the corpses in, and there was more hurrah-boys and good feeling and port wine in the cabin than you could ever have thought possible under the circumstances.

* * * * *

Was that all? Well, for a time it was, Coe slipping out at dawn on the ebb with a cargo of Afiola rapscallions he was to drop, one here, one there, all around the Group, we having no further use for them in Puna Punou.

The measles struck us shortly afterwards in a Tahiti bark, and it carried off a sight of people, Afiola included, who was in a sort of armed hiding on the 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 right off, but spread over a matter of eighteen months or more, Coe coming and going regular in the Peep o' Day, and Mrs. Tweedie more blooming than ever.

Coe turned up from Sydney, where he had gone for a general refitting and overhaul, just as Mrs. Tweedie was taking her passage in the Olive Branch, missionary auxiliary barkentine for Honolulu. None of the saints would have a word to say 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 hustle him over the side and into his boat, and the more they hustled the louder he shouted, "Mrs. Tweedie! Mrs. Tweedie!" till at last she heard him in her cabin below, and came running up, smiling, and arranging her hair with her hands.

It was a tight place for Coe, having to do his courting while they were moving him on like the police; but, for all that, when he went down the ladder 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, bringing up in Papiete three weeks later, to buy her some clothes, for every stitch to her name was beating up to Honolulu in the Olive Branch.



MR. BOB

Far away in the western Pacific, in that labyrinth of coral reefs and low, palm-rimmed isles floating between the blue of heaven and the deeper blue 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 visitor from "Home," who descended, not from some tubby bark or slant-masted schooner, but Godlike from the glorious stars themselves—Christmas Day!

The Rev. Walter Kirke looked out moodily from beneath the eaves of his basket-work house, and his heart sank as he gazed across the sweltering strip of water, twenty 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 Rev. J. B. Tracy Titcombe, M.A., Cam.), had sent in a proa with a message of such urgency and need that delay, let alone refusal, was utterly out of the question.

"The king has broken all his promises," wrote Titcombe, in a hand illegible from distress and agitation. "He threatens to burn the new church, flog the members, and spear personally the leading lights of our infant congregation. Yesterday, on my remonstrating with him, he gave me twenty-four hours to leave the island, calling 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 with fever, and this, together with my halting knowledge of the native language, has put me at such a disadvantage that I have no alternative but to appeal to you. For Heaven's sake, please come instantly and exert yourself on my behalf, or else we may lose Tarawa for good, and put back the good work by a dozen years."

"We'll have to go, dear," said Kirke to his pretty wife.

"Yes, we'll have to go," she assented sadly.

She could not help feeling cross with the Titcombes for always muddling things—a little unjustly, perhaps—for her own missionary path had ever been so easy and untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty, whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and 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 Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned back by her from his projected invasion of Apiang—presenting the missionary's wife, on his departure, with a gold-inlaid Winchester that was the apple of his eye.

"I shall make Karaitch smart for this!" she said vindictively. "I sha'n't let him off with less than twenty tons of copra for my girls' school; and he'll have to apologize, too, and swear on a shark's head to behave for a year."

"We can't all have such intrepid little wives," said Kirke, putting his arm fondly about her. Experience had shown him that in native questions she was always as good as her word, and it was with a kind of proud humility he 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 a new peace, with stately apologies, gifts of turtle and bonito hooks, endless and troublesomely idiomatic compliments, and incidentally a little friction with the Titcombes, who would certainly resent being saved so easily.

No, Kirke wasn't afraid of Karaitch. Ada would settle Karaitch out of hand. What he dreaded was that twenty miles of water under the noonday sun, and the problem of Daisy—Daisy, their little girl of eight, who was playing so contentedly on the floor with the presents Santa Claus had just brought her.

"Oh, Walter, I can't let Daisy go again!" cried Mrs. Kirke. "Last time she nearly died in the boat, and you know she wasn't really herself for weeks and weeks afterwards."

Daisy heard her name being spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twelve biblical slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a darling little chair!

"But leave her?" questioned Kirke, with a hopeless gesture of his hand. "And that with the island full of mutineers, and Heaven only knows to-day what deviltry and carousing?"

Mrs. Kirke thought awhile.

"Twenty miles over there—three hours," she said at last; "an hour to straighten out the king—four hours; three back, makes seven. That means being home by sundown. We can trust Nantok all right to take good care of her, and then I'll get Peter to send down an armed guard."

Kirke acquiesced in silence. He was a tall, thin man, not over-clever, whose fervent Christianity was strangely at variance with a constitutional inclination to see the darker side of things. He distrusted Nantok, distrusted the king's guard, felt a profound apprehension of that jeering, boisterous mob of sailors, who pigged together in Rick's old boatshed, and were numerous enough 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 milkwarm water, till up from the transparent depths the swift, bluish glimmer of a shark warned him to snatch her in. Remembered the hopelessness of it, the terror, the despair, he himself bending to an oar, and offering every inducement his mind could think of to incite his crew to pull their hearts out. No, all that was a nightmare to look back on—never, never to be repeated.

Daisy was called over and the situation explained to her. Like all only children, living constantly in the society of her parents, and sharing their 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 trembled, and her eyes flooded with tears, she put on a brave face to it, and protested her willingness to remain with Nantok and be a good little girl.

"And mamma and papa will be back at dusk; and if they are detained, you mustn't be the least bit worried about them; and you'll let Nantok put you to bed at eight; and if you wake up and feel frightened, you are to remember the army outside, guarding you in your sleep like a little princess!"

"And Dod, too," added Daisy piously, though inwardly pleased to have the army as well.

"Oh, my lamb!" cried Mrs. Kirke, clasping her to her breast. "It breaks mamma's heart to leave her little girl on Christmas Day!"

Altogether it was a damp moment in the Kirke family, and even the missionary's eyes were suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife and talked hurriedly about the magic lantern, and the dolly, and what a jolly evening they'd all have when they got back from Tarawa.

Preparations were soon made. The whaleboat was got ready, and manned by a stout crew of such recent Christians that the demons of the strait had first to be appeased by two tins of salmon and six biscuit, paid secretly in advance to Nebenua, the devil-priest. Then, when all was ready, even to the 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. Why the army was so ruthlessly condemned to wear boots, is a question that was often asked and never properly answered. Nobody else wore boots—not even the king; but the military caste is proverbially dressy, and it is enough to say that the armed forces of Apiang set immense store by their boots.

At last they arrived, boots and all, a straggling, hobbling party of seven, with cartridge belts and rifles. Little Daisy was formally put in their charge; solemn pledges 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 eternal vigilance. And then, when everything had been said, and explained, and threatened, the whaleboat hoisted her anchor—a coral stone—and set a straight course for Tarawa.

It was a long day—a very long day—quite the longest day in Daisy's tiny life. She successively exhausted the magic lantern, the dolly, and the chair. She went out and prattled with the army where they sprawled under the lee of the kitchen, smoking 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 massacre on Tapatuea, where all Nantok's people had been killed during that Kanaka Saint Bartholomew's. Then out to the army again, and checkers, which the army played amazingly well, beating her so often that even this pastime palled. Then——

Oh, what a sigh!

The sleek little seal was aweary, aweary. The house was so empty, so still, and there was such a void in that aching baby heart! She went into papa's room and cried on his bed. He would be drowned in the strait; savage old Karaitch would shoot him with a gun; he would be blown out to sea like Mr. Pettibone the beach-comber. 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 Nosey, her pet chicken, that Nantok had killed by mistake one night for supper; cried over papa and mamma, far away in the whaler—totaled up all the little sadnesses of her little life, meting out tears to every one. And then, feeling greatly refreshed, she went out on the front porch, and wondered what she should do next.

Down the shore, about a mile away, there were others who found time less heavy on their hands. At the Land We Live In, a one-roomed saloon which catered for a permanent white population of thirteen, and a transient one that varied from a cutter to a full-rigged ship—at the Land We Live In Christmas was being celebrated in a rousing fashion. To begin with, there were the mutineers of the Lord Dundonald, twenty-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 compelling the wrathful master to pay them their wages to date, from six hundred and thirty-nine pounds he had taken with him from a vessel he had fondly hoped to pump to China. Captain Latimer, with the three mates, the carpenter, and one of the hands, had sailed away south in the longboat, vowing yardarms and a man-of-war, and when last seen was sinking over the horizon in the direction of the Fiji Islands.

Well, here they all were in the Land We Live In, together with Tom Holderson, Peter Extrum, Eddy Newnes, and Long Joe Kelly, all of Apiang; Papa Benson, of Tarawa; Jones and Peabody, of Big Muggin; and crazy old Jimmy Mathison, of nowhere in particular—unless it were the nearest gin bottle; and it was a rip-roaring Christmas, 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 black-eyed little heathen savages, who bore a hand with the trays, and added their saucy laughter to the general gayety, helping out Larry the barkeep as he drew unending corks or stopped to wipe the sweat off his forehead, saying, "Genelmen, the drinks is on Billy," or Tommy, or Long Joe, or whoever it was that was treating.

Suddenly, at the door, which had been kept shut to prevent the natives from assembling and peering in—suddenly, at the door, there was heard a faint, faint knock. The concertina stopped. Fritz, the Dutchman, said "Hoosh!" and raised his pipe for silence. The knock was repeated. Quiet descended on the Land We Live In. Larry looked up from his bottles, and in a rough and belligerent voice called out, "Come in!"

The invitation was hesitatingly obeyed, and there stood Daisy Kirke on the threshold, a sweet, faltering figure, with her guard, boots 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 of Daisy, with the red ribbon in her hair, her dimity frock, her long stockings and pinafore, was as startling as it was unexpected.

"Howdy-do, evver'body?" said she.

There was an embarrassed silence.

"I know you better than you do me," went on Daisy confidentially, proving it with her forefinger. "That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"—indicating a giant of a man with an aquiline nose and a square-cut beard—"you are Mr. Bob Fletcher, the ringleader!"

A giggle of subdued merriment ran round the room. An instinctive respect kept it within bounds, or perhaps it was Bob Fletcher's fierce and warning look that cowed any incipient rowdyism. The brawny mutineer set her on his knee, and, in a voice harshened by thirty years' service before the mast, asked her deferentially if she fancied a glass of syrup?

"No, thank you," said Daisy politely; and then, addressing everybody in general, "papa and mamma's gone to Tarawa!"

"Now, if that ain't too bad!" put in Bob sympathetically.

"And so it just occurred to me," went on Daisy, "to do something nice to surprise them when they came back."

A profound silence greeted this remark. The devil's love of holy water is a craving compared to the amount of love lost between a South Sea missionary and the rough white element that mocks his labors at every turn. It was the custom of the Lord Dundonalds, moreover, to hoot the Rev. Walter Kirke whenever they met him. It was a recollection of this that made the present situation so piquant and humorous.

"Besides, it seems too bad," continued Daisy, "that the natives should have such a fuss made over them, while all you white gentlemen are left out in the cold. It must look queer to Dod, and I don't believe He likes it!"

"Everything for the niggers—that's right," muttered Tom Extrum bitterly, "and not even a six-months-old newspaper for the likes of us!"

"You don't look so werry wicked," said Daisy, taking in the room with a comprehensive glance, and putting an arm around Mr. Bob's neck, as though confident of having at least one friend among the company. "I wonder if you wouldn't all like to come along to my house, and play with my magic lantern, and—and—organize a Band of Hope?"

She was abashed by the roar of laughter that followed the proposal. Papa Benson flung himself on the floor and rolled over and over. Long Joe uttered whoops of delight. 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 We Live In. As the rumpus died down something very like remorse overwhelmed the roisterers as they saw Daisy's flushing, quivering little face, hot with mortification.

It was Mr. Bob who sprang to the rescue before the brimming tears could fall.

"I'm on!" he shouted, rising to his feet with unexpected enthusiasm. "Now, then, boys, who says 'Aye, aye' for the Band of 'Ope?"

A good part of the crowd would have preferred to stay by their spree; but so contagious is example and so sheeplike the sailor nature, that the whole room fell in with Bob, and answered his call like one man.

He swung Daisy up on his shoulder, where, from that dizzy perch, she looked back shyly at the noisy pack behind her. Secure in the conquest of the ringleader, whom intuitively she felt stronger than the rest, 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 boisterousness and horseplay that marked the inception of the Band of Hope. Her satisfaction was suddenly checked, however, by the sight of the Kanaka girls joining the procession and making as though to follow.

"No, they mustn't come!" she cried out jealously. "Please, Mr. Mathison, tell them they mustn't come! This is to be for men only!"

"Turn them back!" thundered Bob. "Don't yer 'ear the little lady's horders? Scamper, ye jades!"

Papa Benson struck up a quickstep on the concertina, and, marching beside Bob Fletcher, helped to lead the van. The mutineers, beach-combers, 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 all angles. In this fashion they made the missionary's house, swarmed into the neat bare inclosure of coral sand, and invaded the silent rooms.

A terrible irresolution was stealing over Daisy. Twelve slides, representing the wanderings of Saint Paul, began to seem too trifling a means of holding the attention of this enormous and expectant crowd. Besides, it came over her with a shock that she was a little hazy about Saint Paul; and then there 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 stroking her hair with an enormous red hand, showed a most comforting disposition to himself take the breach. At any rate, he roared for silence; told Mr. Mathison he'd cut his liver out if he didn't belay with them there remarks, and assumed a tone of authority that calmed the tumult of Daisy's misgivings.

"Friends," he said, "and mates, and respected genelmen hall, we are here, two and three gathered togetherlike, for the purpose of horganizing a Band of 'Ope."

"Local Number One," interrupted Billy Dutton, the donkey-man, who had had some trades'-union experience.

"Band of 'Ope, Local Number One," continued Mr. Bob, receiving the suggestion in an accommodating spirit. "And it is with great pleasure I propose the name of hour first president, Miss Daisy Kirke, of Apiang."

Then, my stars, wasn't there a cheer! Daisy hung her head, nestled closer to Mr. Bob, and felt all the joy of good works promptly bearing fruit.

"I don't see no reason," went on Mr. Bob, "why a false modesty, that 'as been my hunfailing 'andicap through life, should prevent me from nominating myself as your hesteemed vice president. I do not wish to seem a-soaring too 'igh, or reaching out for honors that belong to habler 'eads nor mine; but I'll take the sense of the meeting in a kindly spirit, and will abide peaceable by a show of 'ands!"

When the applause had subsided, Billy Dutton sprang up, and wanted to know "what about a recording seckitary?"

"I don't see no 'arm in the honorable genelman hassuming the job 'isself," said Mr. Bob, "if 'e thinks 'e's sufficient of a speller, and won't run the band into 'orrible extravagances 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. Riley, I see raising your fist agin him? Oh, only to ax a question. Well, one thing at a time, Brother Riley. Does the meeting hendorse Mr. Willum Dutton for recording seckitary?"

The meeting did, vociferously and with cheers. Daisy ran and got her slate for the recording seckitary, who thereupon (after first inscribing the names of the office bearers in a shaky print) began to draw a wonderful picture of a pirate ship.

"Afore listening to the plans of our valued president," said Mr. Bob, "I propose myself to hoffer up a few general remarks on 'Ope! Me and 'Ope is old friends, genelmen. We set sail together from the port of London, 'Ope and I, when I was a bright-faced boy that 'igh! We've bunked in together, fair weather and 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 dollars, blew them in right royal. 'Ope and I, when we 'adn't none, tightened our belts and cheered each other hup. Looking back over all them years, I want to stand hup and testify right 'ere to the best friend of the sailorman, bar none, and p'r'aps the honly one he ever truly 'ad—and that's 'Ope, God bless her!"

Amid the ensuing uproar, which jarred the walls of that prim missionary residence like an explosion of dynamite, spilling plates off dressers and cock-billing texts, and arresting the astonished clock at four forty-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 recurred to her. Infantile ambitions awoke and clamored. But it was daunting, just the same, to confront those rows of eyes, and those great big, unshaved, shaggy-looking faces, all keenly waiting for her to speak.

"Now, then, little lady," said the vice president, "'ere's your Band of 'Ope, a-panting to set its 'and to the plow!"

Daisy cleared her throat. Pride and timidity struggled with each other in that eager little countenance. Had it not been for an encouraging squeeze from Mr. Bob, who knows but what she might have burst into tears, and disgraced herself before the whole band. But the squeeze, coming exactly at the right time, averted so mortifying a catastrophe.