t Brayley was a man of few words. But sometimes as
we paced the deck together at night, as the schooner skimmed over the
seas before the lusty trade-wind, he would talk to me of his child; and
it was easy for me to see that his love for her was the one hope of his
life.

"'I am going back to England soon,' he said to me one night; 'there is
but one of us left--my sister--and I would like to see her face again
in this world. She is older than I--she is past fifty now.... And it is
thirty years since I said good-bye to her... thirty years... thirty long
years,' and then he turned his face away and looked out upon the sea.
'Just to see her, and then say good-bye again, for here I have cast my
lot, and here I will die. If I were alone in the world perhaps I would
take to civilisation again, but Tessa'--he shook his head--'she would
wither and die in cold England.'"

*****

"Ten days out we ran in amongst the Radack Chain of the Marshall
Islands, and the wind falling light, and being surrounded by reefs and
low uninhabited coral atolls, Tierney brought to, and anchored for
the night. You know the spot, about nine miles due west of Ailuk, and
between two sandy atolls covered with a scant growth of cocoanuts and
pan-danus palms.

"The ship being all right the hands turned in, leaving only one man on
watch, while we three white men laid down aft to smoke and yarn. It was
a bright moonlight night, as light as day--just such a night as this.
Away on our port quarter, distant about a quarter of a mile, was a
shallow patch on which the surf was breaking. It was merely one of those
flat patches of coral that, rising up steep from the bottom, have deep
water all round them, but are always covered on the surface by a depth
of one or two fathoms--c mushrooms,' we call them, you know. Well, it
was such a wonderfully clear night that that shallow patch, with the
surf hissing and swirling over and around it, was as clearly visible
to us on the schooner as if it had been under our counter, not ten feet
away."

*****

"Covering up my face from the vivid moonlight with a soft native mat, I
laid down, and after awhile dropped off to sleep.

"How long I had been asleep I did not know then--I learnt afterwards
that it was nearly four hours--when I was awakened by a loud hail of
'Boat ahoy!' called out by some one on board.

"I was awake in an instant, and sprang to my feet.

"'What is it?' I said to Tierney and Brayley, who were sta