d the little
brown girl had drilled them both. She had a knack with the rifle....

"I waded to meet the boat, and she tossed me the gun. I held them off for
a little, while we drew away from the shore. But when we were thirty or
forty yards off, I heard rifles from the other schooner, firing past us
at the blacks in the bush; and the girl stopped rowing. So I turned
around and saw that one of the balls from the other schooner had struck
her in the back. So I sat there, in the sun, drifting with the wind, and
held her in my arms till she coughed and died.

"Then I went out to the other schooner and told them they were bad
marksmen. They had only been passing by, for copra; and the story I told
them was a shocking one. They were much impressed, and they seemed glad
to get away. But the blacks were still on shore, so that I could not go
back for the pearls; and I worked the schooner out by myself, and shaped
a course....

"I came to Tubuai, alone thus, a day before you, Joel."

IX

For a long time after Mark's story ended, the two brothers sat still in
the cabin, puffing at their pipes, thinking.... Mark watched Joel,
waiting for the younger man to speak. And Joel's thoughts ranged back,
and picked up the tale in the beginning, and followed it through once
more....

They were silent for so long that little Priss, in the cabin, drifted
from waking dreams to dreams in truth. The pictures Mark's words had
conjured up merged with troubled phantasies, and she twisted and cried
out softly in her sleep so that Joel went in at last to be sure she was
not sick. But while he stood beside her, she passed into quiet and
untroubled slumber, and he came back and sat down with Mark again.

"You brought the schooner into Tubuai?" he asked.

"Aye. Alone. Half a thousand miles. There's a task, Joel."

"And left it there?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Mark smiled grimly. "It was known there," he said quietly. "Also, the
three whom I had found aboard it were known. And they had friends in
Tubuai, who wondered what had come to them. I was beginning to--find
their questions troublesome--when the _Nathan Ross_ came in."

"They will ask more questions now," said Joel.

"They must ask them of the schooner; and--she does not speak," Mark told
him.

Joel was troubled and uncertain. "It's--a black thing," he said.

"They'll not be after me, if that distresses you," Mark promised him.
"Curiosity does not go to such lengths in these wa