en the delay. We
might be tied up by the nose in Apamama Lagoon for a week or more before
we could make another start. I rolled up the chart, wet and soddened as
it was with the rain beating on it, and angrily told Tematau, who was
steering, to watch the sea, for every now and then the boat would plunge
heavily and ship a caskful or two of water over the bows.

"We are in a bad place here, master," he replied, quietly; "'tis the
strong current that raiseth the high sea."

I knew he was right, and could not but feel ashamed of my irritability,
for both he and Tepi had been watching the boat most carefully, and I
there and then decided what to do, my ill-temper vanishing when I saw
Mrs. Krause and Niabon bailing out the water which had come over the
hatch coamings into their cabin.

"This is a bad start for us, Lucia," I said cheerfully; "we can't dodge
about here under the lee of the land with such a sea running. I am
afraid that there is no help for us but to make a run for it for
Apamama. What do you think, Niabon?"

She looked at me with a smiling face, and rising to her feet steadied
herself by placing her hands on the after-coaming of the hatch. Her thin
muslin gown was wet through from neck to hem, and clung closely to her
body, and as her eyes met mine, I, for the first time in my life, felt
a sudden tenderness for her, something that I never before felt when any
woman's eyes had looked into mine. And I had never been a saint, though
never a libertine; but between the two courses, I think, I had had as
much experience of women as falls to most men, and I had never yet met
a woman who seemed to so hold and possess my moral sense as did this
semi-savage girl, who, for all I knew, might be no better than the usual
run of Polynesian girls with European blood in their veins. But yet at
that moment, I felt, ay, I _knew_, though I could not tell why, that she
was _not_ what she might well have been, when one considered her past
environment, and her lonely unprotected situation--that is, lonely and
unprotected from a civilised and conventional point of view; for with
the wild races among whom she had dwelt since her infancy, she
had always met with full, deep, and ample protection, and love and
respect--and fear.

"Thou art the captain, Simi," she said in Samoan, "and thou alone canst
guide us on the sea. And I think, as thou dost, that we must sail before
the storm to Apamama; for when the wind comes suddenly and st