ow, Mr. Lawson, as you are so very anxious to get back home I will
not delay. Here are my wife and my native assistant as witnesses. Stand
up, please."

*****

"Get in, you little beast," said Lawson, as he bundled Lalia into the
boat and started back home, "and don't fall overboard. I don't want to
lose the Best Asset in that Fool's Estate."

*****

When the consul, a week later, came down to take possession of
Etheridge's "estate," he called in at Safune to ask Lawson to come and
help him to take an inventory. Terere met him with a languid smile, and,
too lazy perhaps to speak English, answered his questions in Samoan.

"He's married and gone," she said.

"Married? Aren't _you_ Mrs. Lawson?" said the bewildered consul, in
English.

"Not now, sir; my sister is. Will you take me to Apia in your boat,
please?"

And that is how Lawson, the _papalagi mativa_ (poor white) and "the
best-hearted fellow in the world," became a _mau aha_--a man of riches,
and went, with the Best Asset in Etheridge's estate, the calm-eyed
Lalia, to start a hotel in--well, no matter where.

DESCHARD OF ONEAKA

I.

Among the Gilbert Group--that chain of low-lying sandy atolls annexed
by the British Government two years ago--there is one island that may be
said to be both fertile and beautiful; yet for all this Kuria--for so
it is called by the natives of the group generally--has remained almost
uninhabited for the past forty years. Together with the lagoon island
of Aranuka, from which it is distant about six miles, it belongs to the
present King of Apamama, a large and densely populated atoll situated
half a degree to the eastward. Thirty years ago, however, the
grandfather of the lad who is now the nominal ruler of Apamama had cause
to quarrel with the Kurians, and settled the dispute by invading their
island and utterly destroying them, root and branch. To-day it is
tenanted only by the young king's slaves.

Of all the many groups and archipelagoes that stud the North and South
Pacific from the rocky, jungle-covered Bonins to Juan Fernandez,
the islands of the Gilbert Group are--save for this Kuria--the most
uninviting and monotonous in appearance. They are for the most part but
narrow strips of sandy soil, densely clothed, it is true, with countless
thousands of stately cocoanut palms varied with groves of pan-danus and
occasional patches of stunted scrub, but flat and unpleasing to the
eye. Seldom exceeding two mi