recruit. Now, lie down there
on that cane lounge, beside the open window, and let me bring you
something to drink--something cool. What would you like? There is lager
beer, there is very cold water from a canvas water-bag, and there is
some hock."

I gratefully took a long drink of the cold water, and then, instead of
lying down, seated myself in a wide cane chair, and began to talk to my
hostess, who sat on the lounge a few feet away, and now that I had
an opportunity of closer observation, I saw that she was--despite her
pallor and worn appearance--a woman of the very greatest beauty and
grace.

It was so long since I had even talked to a white woman, even of the
commonest class, that I could not but be insensibly attracted to her,
and when in a few minutes she smiled at something I said about my
longing to get away to Samoa, even if I had to sail there alone in
my whaleboat, the faint flush that tinged her cheek seemed to so
transfigure her that she looked like a girl of nineteen or twenty.
She talked to me for nearly an hour, and I noticed that although we
conversed principally about the Line Islands, and the natives, and
of our few white neighbours scattered throughout the group, and their
idiosyncrasies--humorous and otherwise--she hardly ever mentioned her
husband's name, except when I asked her some direct question concerning
him, such as the number of his outlying stations, was he fond of fishing
or shooting, etc.

In some way I came to the conclusion that she was an unhappy woman as
far as her relations with her husband went; and without the slightest
reason whatever to guide me to such an inference, felt that he, and not
she, was to blame; and even as we talked, there was unconsciously taking
possession of me a dislike to a man from whom I had experienced nothing
but civility and kindness. Just as she was leaving the room to attend
to her household duties, the man Tematau came to the door, carrying a
string of freshly-husked young drinking coco-nuts. At a sign from his
mistress, he opened one and brought it to me, and then leaving a few
beside my chair, took the remainder down to my boat's crew.

[Illustration: The man Tematau came to the door 032]

"That is Tematau, my husband's head boatman," said my hostess in her
soft tones, as she watched him walking down to the beach; "he is so
different from these noisy, quarrelsome Tarawa people, that I am always
glad to have him about the house when he is not