go anywhere on the beach, from respectable Matautu right
down to riotous, dissolute Matafele, and make her purchases at the big
store of Der Deutsche Handels Plantagen und Sud See Inseln Gesellschaft
without even a drunken native daring to look at her. That was because
every one, dissolute native and licentious white, knew she was a good
woman. Perhaps, had she been married, and had she had a yellow, tallowy
skin and the generally acidulated appearance peculiar to white women
long resident in the South Seas, we wouldn't have thought so much of
her, and felt mean and contemptible when she taxed us in her open,
innocent fashion with doing those things that we ought not have done.
But she had a sweet, merry little face, set about with dimples, and soft
cheeks hued like the first flush of a ripening peach; and when she spoke
to us she brought back memories of other faces like hers--far-away faces
that most of us would have liked to have seen again.

*****

Just by the low stone wall, that in those days came close down to the
creek, the little lady stood under the shade of some cocoanuts, and
spoke to me.

"Who is that horrible, sulky-looking half-caste?" she said, jerking her
sunshade towards my late companion.

"That is Hickson, Miss Milly," I said--a very decent, steady fellow,
with a white man's heart.

"Decent! steady! and with a white man's heart!" and Miss Milly's
pink-and-white cheeks reddened angrily. "How I hate that expression!
No wonder all sorts of horrible things happen in these dreadful islands
when white men will walk down the road with a cruel, remorseless wretch
like Hickson--the man that murdered his sister."

"You should not say that, Miss Milly," I said. "Of course that is the
common report, spread about by the captain of the German brig----. But
that is because Hickson nearly killed him for calling him a nigger. And
you must remember, Miss Milly, that I was there at the time. Hickson
was our second mate. His sister was killed, but it is a cruel thing to
accuse him of murdering her; he was very fond of her."

"Oh dear! I am so glad to hear some one say it isn't true," and the
bright eyes filled. "They say, too, she was such a pretty little thing.
How ever did she get to such a terrible place as Ponape? Come up and see
uncle and me before you go away again. Good-bye now, I'm going to buy a
water-bag at Goddeffroy's."

*****

I think that Hickson must have guessed that he had formed the subject