eason for the whaleships; four moons more and we may
see one. I know not what other ships would come here."

By and by they saw the ship. She sailed slowly round the south point of
Pingelap and backed her foreyard, and presently a boat was lowered and
pulled ashore.

Little Tarita, clapping her hands with joy, darted into the house,
followed by Ruvani and Ninia, and casting off their wet girdles of
banana fibre--for they had just come in from fishing--they dressed
themselves in their pretty _nairiris_ of coloured grasses, and put on
head-dresses of green and gold parrots' feathers, with necklaces of
sweet-smelling berries around their necks, and were soon paddling across
the lagoon to see the white strangers from the ship, who had already
landed and gone up the beach and into the village.

It is nearly a mile from Takai to the village, and before the girls
reached there they heard a great clamour of angry voices, and presently
two white men dressed in white and carrying books in their hands came
hurriedly down the beach, followed by a crowd of Sralik's warriors, who
urged them along and forced them into the boat.

Then seizing the boat they shot her out into the water, and, shaking
their spears and clubs, called out--

"Go, white men, go!"

But although the native sailors who pulled the boat were trembling
with fear, the two white men did not seem frightened, and one of them,
standing up in the stern of the boat, held up his hand and called out to
the angry and excited people--

"Let me speak, I pray you!"

The natives understood him, for he spoke to them in the language spoken
by the natives of Strong's Island, which is only a few hundred miles
from Pingelap.

*****

The people parted to the right and left as Sralik, the chief, with
a loaded musket grasped in his brawny right hand, strode down to the
water's edge. Suppressed wrath shone in his eyes as he grounded his
musket on the sand and looked at the white man.

"Speak," he said, "and then be gone."

The white man spoke.

"Nay, spare us thy anger, O chief. I come, not here to fill thy heart
with anger, but with peace; and, to tell thee of the great God, and of
His Son Christ who hath sent me to thee."

Sralik laughed scornfully.

"Thou liest. Long ago, did I know that some day a white-painted ship
would come to Pingelap, and that white, men would come and speak to us
of this new God and His Son who is called Christ, and would say that
this Chris