y from Ponape towards a group of low-lying atolls
called Ngatik.

*****

The rain had ceased, and in the warm, starlight night she drifted on to
the west, and as she drifted she dreamed of her father, and saw Ninia
the widow, her mother, sitting in the desolate house on Takai, before
the dying embers of the fire, and heard her voice crying:

"_O thou white Christ God, to whom my husband called as he died, tell me
are my children perished? I pray thee because of the white blood that is
in them to protect them and let me behold my beloved again_."

The girl awoke. Her mother's voice seemed to still murmur in her ears,
and a calm feeling of rest entered her soul. She took her paddle, and
then stopped and thought.

This new God--the Christ-God of her father--perhaps He would help her
to reach the land. She, too, would call upon Him, even as her mother had
done.

"See, O Christ-God. I am but one left of three. I pray Thee guide my
canoe to land, so that I may yet see Ninia my mother once more."

As the dawn approached she dozed again, and then she heard a sound that
made her heart leap--it was the low, monotonous beat of the surf.

When the sun rose she saw before her a long line of low-lying islands,
clothed in cocoanuts, and shining like jewels upon the deep ocean blue.

She ate some more of the fish, and, paddling as strongly as her strength
would permit, she passed between the passage, entered the smooth waters
of the lagoon, and ran the canoe up on to a white beach.

"The Christ-God has heard me," she said as she threw her wearied form
under the shade of the cocoa-nut palms and fell into a heavy, dreamless
slumber.

And here next morning the people of Ngatik found her. They took the poor
wanderer back with them to their houses that were clustered under the
palm-groves a mile or two away, and there for two years she dwelt with
them, hoping and waiting to return to Pingelap.

One day a ship came--a whaler cruising back to Strong's Island and the
Marshall Group. The captain was told her story by the people of Ngatik,
and offered to touch at Pingelap and land her.

Ninia the widow was still living on Takai, and her once beautiful face
had grown old and haggard-looking. Since the night of the storm four
ships had called at Pingelap, but she had never once gone over to the
village, for grief was eating her heart away; and so, when one evening
she heard that a ship was in sight, she took no heed.

Her house wa