hey should put in at the beach on Tugulu
and walk home.

"Paddle, paddle strongly," she cried, "what mattereth a little rain and
wind! And sing, so that our mother will hear us and make ready something
to eat. Look, I can already see the blaze of her fire."

Striking their paddles into the water in unison, they commenced to sing,
but suddenly their voices died away in terror as a strange, droning hum
was borne down to them from the black line of Tugulu shore; and then the
droning deepened into a hoarse roaring noise as the wild storm of wind
and fierce, stinging rain tore through the groves of cocoanuts and
stripped them of leaves and branches.

Brave Ninia, leaning her lithe figure well over the side of the canoe,
plunged her paddle deep down and tried to bring the canoe head to
wind to meet the danger, and Ruvani, in the bow, with long hair
flying straight out behind her, answered her effort with a cry of
encouragement, and put forth all her strength to aid.

But almost ere the cry had left her lips, the full fury of the squall
had struck them; the canoe was caught in its savage breath, twirled
round and round, and then filled.

"Keep thou in the canoe, little one, and bale," cried Ninia to Tarita,
as she and Ruvani leaped into the water.

For some minutes the two girls clung with one hand each to the gunwale,
and Tarita, holding the large wooden _ahu_ or baler, in both hands,
dashed the water out. Then she gave a trembling cry--the baler struck
against the side of the canoe and dropped overboard.

Ninia dared not leave the canoe to seek for it in the intense darkness,
and so clinging to the little craft, which soon filled again, they
drifted about. The waters of the lagoon were now white with the breaking
seas, and the wind blew with fierce, cruel, steadiness, and although
they knew it not, they were being swept quickly away from the land
towards the passage in the reef.

The rain had ceased now, and the water being warm none of them felt
cold, but the noise of the wind and sea was so great that they had to
shout loudly to each other to make their voices heard.

Presently Ruvani called out to Ninia--

"Let us take Tarita between us and swim to the shore, ere the sharks
come to us."

"Nay, we are safer here, Ruvani, And how could we tell my mother that
the canoe is lost? Let us wait a little and then the wind will die
away."

Canoes are valuable property on Pingelap, where suitable wood for
building th